Equinox: As Above, So Below
I’m spending three weeks in Argyll, on the shores of Loch Fyne, before continuing north to Orkney. I came here for time and space ,time to walk, to look, to think and already the place is beginning to work its way into my thoughts.
The weather suits my mood: bright but misty, obscured, fast-moving tides, and occasional bursts of something that feels almost like alchemy.
Gold birch leaves catch the light. The water turns silver. A heron flies slowly against the tide.
The ordinary is transformed by changing light.
The opposite shore appears and dissolves. The mountains to the east are layered in shades of grey, sometimes sharply defined and sometimes almost lost. Time and distance take on mercurial qualities, constantly changing as mist and light move across the water.
What I keep noticing is the way the colours echo one another.
The browns and greens of the shore are repeated in the hedge and the high trees. The silver of the water appears again in the sky. The land on the opposite shore seems to dissolve into the water, while the trees merge with the hills behind them.
Even the stones on the beach seem to contain a whole palette of the place: slate greys, warm browns, ochres, rusts and muted greens. The seaweed adds another layer - extraordinary strands of gold, olive, amber and deep brown washed up among the stones and water.
Everything seems to be reflecting everything else.
As above, so below.
There is something about the equinox that makes this particularly noticeable. It is a moment of balance, but also of transition: one season giving way to another, summer still present but already receding. The light is changing. The landscape is changing. Nothing stays quite where it was.
Perhaps that is why I’ve been noticing things that are half there and half not.
A shore hidden by mist. A mountain appearing and disappearing. Water and sky becoming indistinguishable. A line of trees dissolving into the land.
I’ve also been collecting small things from the shore - feathers, shells, stones and pieces of driftwood - and sometimes arranging them before photographing them. For the equinox, I found myself drawn to the contrasts of light and dark.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of layering recently. Not just layers of paint, but layers of time. The different moments a place can hold. What we remember about somewhere alongside what is actually in front of us. What has disappeared, what remains, and what reappears in another form.
I’m beginning to think that this is part of what draws me to painting: the possibility of allowing different moments to exist together.
I’ve been collecting firewood, and on the evening of the equinox I’m going to light a small fire in the fire pit on the shore. Just a simple marking of the turning of the year, and a chance to stand beside the water and watch the light change.
