 Two weeks into my residency at Murrays Cottage, Hill End and it snowed this morning. I kid you not. After two warm days with no fire, I gave myself permission to light a fire at breakfast time and have a studio day. My first. There are some sneaky little drafts around this little home, but the fire soon banished them.
I briefly ran out of yarn to dye this week, which changed my focus back to the landscape around me, rather than what was under my feet and hanging from trees. I spent the morning in Golden Gully last week, strolling, drawing, and picking up leaves. I was struck by not only the back breaking industry of the largely Chinese gold diggers, but also the complete indifference of nature as it carved through the abandoned diggings and reshaped the landscape to a new normal. I felt duty bound to draw the arch and decided that I would be back to look for landlines. A couple of days ago, I clambered around the precipitously steep diggings of Hawkins Hill. The pockmarks of mine shafts and the undulations of mullock heaps are everywhere along this ridgeline. Now these are the only reminders with trees and shrubs taking advantage of the disturbance, finding a way to survive. One evening I was browsing through one of the books on the shelf in the cottage, and came across this quote: “I want to evoke the sensation of that anti-human environment that is partly indifferent nature and partly the creation of indifferent, raw, unthinking people.” Donald Friend- Diary 4-2-50 There you go. Great minds think alike ;) |
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