Brisons Veor
CAPE
CORNWALL
DECEMBER 4 – 17, 2021
RECIPIENT OF THE FIRST ‘VI TRUSLER’ BURSARY AWARD.
This awarded residency gave me the opportunity to fully engage in my art practice for the two week period. I am truly grateful to @Brisons_veor for granting me a deeper and more rigorous approach.
The Work
The focus of the project was solely to connect with place, its nature and what it presented mostly through walking, drawing and collecting natural plant forms, earth, sand, water …
"Cape Cornwall, you have come to me in words, although your vision is clear to see, for I am a painter, yet it is first the words of you that echo loudly. Dusk, soft light of purple hue. Mizzle. Salty spray on my lips as I turn from the strong winds. I become a weather watcher and an observer of the living working landscape.
This mid-winter December light I find so beguiling. I walk with it by day, yet at night with the vast darkness of land and sea, the water’s turbulence and with no light to speak of, it’s dark and mysterious, lighthouses welcome. Screeching gulls, shimmering afternoon light. The Brisons. Scenes of shipwrecks. I am chasing down your undefinable qualities that make me sit here and marvel.
Lichen of burnt orange, gorse (furze) in flower in December, hunkered down cottages, I have observed and drawn you. I have been battered and buffeted by the exceptionally strong December winds. I can hear the particular cry of the chough, Priest’s Cove fishermen rush to pull boats away from the powerful Sou’ Westerly swell.
It is all absorbed and distilled in time to come quietly, not rushed or forced. Walking slowly and sketching every day, the shape of the land, the pathways, the herringbone patterned walls, the man and his dog repairing the stone walls, the turn of the wave, the plants in the hedgerow, these are observed and noted. It all stirs my soul. It will present itself how it will.
I will keep these strong memories with deep affection".