Inside atacama
Five pieces selected from a larger body of work made from 2017 to 2021. Inspired by the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, an extraordinary varied and multi-layered landscape with an ancient feel, a sense of the ground being somehow sacred. (Printed catalogue still available).
‘Deluge’, 160 x 94.5cm. Linen, earth pigments, acrylic medium, paper thread.
‘Fissure’, 95 x 142cm. Cotton canvas, earth pigments, acrylic medium, linen thread.
‘HaCI’, 143 x 83cm. Linen, earth pigments, acrylic medium, cotton thread.
‘Plateau’, 94 x 68cm (framed). Linen, earth pigments, acrylic medium, paper, cotton thread.
‘Salar’, 161 x 92cm, cotton canvas, earth pigments, acrylic medium acrylic paint, linen thread.
Stuffed Full of Pigment
An eternal ground that doesn’t care,
it asks for nothing and I’m aware
it is indifferent to my me.
I am tempered by the emptiness,
and its lack of interest.
Should I really be here,
disturbing what’s alone?
It doesn’t need a witness
to the slow-shifting, creeping,
shuffling of stone.
The way it was.
The way it will be. Always.
No sound.
Except the puffing of my breath.
The wheeze of wind,
the singing sand.
the crunch and grind, of rock.
Old earthly happenings,
shuddering and shakings,
Making mountains, valleys
domes and gullies,
craters, fissures, dunes.
I stare, enraptured by enormity.
Lines and ridges run and rise,
asking for translation.
Straight and wonky, undulations,
stretched and spikey, thin and wide.
Waiting for my thread.
I feel the texture in my eyes
and underneath my boots;
Crusted, crunchy,
rough and jagged,
slabbed and gritty, smooth.
I touch them, rub them.
Gently.
Shapes;
all curious, weird and raw.
Explosions and erosions,
elemental leavings
of up-heavings.
Will I use them?
I’m not sure.
Colour:
mixed-up, stacked-up,
scattered, layered,
captured, blended, ground.
Orange, oxides,
mauve and brown,
chestnut, salt-white, sand.
I hold them in my hand.
I look up.
Cloud formations wander slowly,
Steadily, seemingly benign, until,
unusually, they turn from
white to black
unleashing torrents that attack.
Unsteady rock.
Sandstone turns to sludge.
Slides, glides,
thin-moving rivulets of mud,
on to highways, pathways,
byways, goneways.
No here, no there.
No out, go back.
Retreat.
Return, to Alto Atacama.
Look out and watch the grey, rising,
river rushing past,
backlit by an edifice of orange.
Stuffed full of pigment.