The Light in the Trees

Which comes first, image or story?

Stalked

It’s time for the next of my art-led pieces, with an audio treat near the end. For a second time, I am focussing on a collaboration. Often, when I am asked to illustrate some writing, the text is already finished, and the art I make is in response to the words. This is usually a richly rewarding experience. I sit back and read the work just letting it settle into my mind and imagination. Then I read it again, making notes of imagery that leaps out, or beats of the story that need to be highlighted.

Blasted

It was 2020, and I received an email from the

The Dark Mountain Project

editors asking if I’d be up for collaborating with

Paul Kingsnorth

again for the next edition dedicated to fiction, called Fabula. The brief was for me to use my ancient art materials and for Paul to write, as each of the writers in the book would be paired with artists or illustrators to make completely new visual and written fiction work.

The original artworks with the finished book and bookmark (on the tiny table on which I painted them, on my boat).

We agreed, and I asked Paul if he would wait until I had sent him images of some work in oak gall ink I was making on parchment which I had prepared for the purpose. I told him it would feature trees, a rugged landscape and probably a hermit.

With each of the panels, I started by darkening the areas of the skins which had natural marks and textures, by adding very dilute washes of iron gall ink, then used them as the basis for the landscapes which emerged. This is one of the ways I feel a connection back to the rock art of Europe, and indeed the rest of the world, where our ancestors allowed the naturally occurring features of the rock to suggest forms that they accentuated by drawing. Working on skins, birch bark, prepared paper, or on wood and stone, I am always collaborating with another being, though it is often not a human being.

Drawing for me is conversation, not a monologue. The times when I insist I know exactly what a drawing should be doing… I bore myself rigid. And as with conversations, paying attention, knowing when to stop, or when you are repeating yourself, is vital.

Hermit

To be honest, I’m not sure Paul waited for the images, but instead dived straight in on what he already wanted to write: The Light in the Trees. Either way, it’s a wonderful story, which you can read here on his website. Or you can listen to me reading it, sitting on my boat in the middle of the Thames, one afternoon. I did it in one take, before I got back into sound editing for my writing on Substack, so it’s not a perfect take, but it has heart.

The images still seem to work well with the words, not ‘illustrating’ them, but sitting beside them, in conversation.

And talking of conversations, today I’ll be on a Zoom, talking about art and practice with Paul for his new podcast, which will come to Substack sometime soon. I know he has questions for me about how and why I make art, but I also plan to ask him about how his fiction stories arrive: as images, plots, fragments, sentences, characters? Well, we can both talk for England, so hopefully we’ll have something good to share with you later in the year.

Reach

You might recognise the tiny painting above Reach, which at only four inches wide is one of the smaller pieces I have made, and possibly my most successful. It has become a logo of sorts, on here, elsewhere on the web. Like all the other images in this set, it is entirely of home made materials: quill pen, feather brushes, iron gall ink, deerskin parchment . It was sold to a friend in USA a few years back. All these paintings have found homes, and although I ma glad of that, I do miss them, as they were a turning point in my art practice, away from highly chromatic work to something more tonal and layered.

My next book will probably involve a lot of trees, and I am very happy to be returning to this perennial subject matter for the art that will hopefully fill it. Even the sound of working with ink, parchment and quill pen is a delight - a gentle scratch, the proof of generative friction, leaving behind a black trace of the line of the mind’s eye.

Warm wishes to all for the week ahead. More words next week, for sure.

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