Contrasting Textures

Those of you who have seen some of my recent work will have noticed the contrasting textures on it; the dark, regular brick and cobble textures adjacent to the more naturalistic and irregular textures of the landscape and moors. As always this has been inspired by the landscape of the Pennines of West Yorkshire and also by some of the words of the Elmet poems of Ted Hughes.

This area is also where the poet Ted Hughes was born and spent his early childhood. Revisiting it in the 1970's he was inspired to write the 'Remains of Elmet' series of poems that evocatively describe the rise and decline of the textile industry and it's battles to subjugate the wild hills and moors around it.

This recent series of pieces have been based on some of the themes and phrases of those poems including

'The Trance of Light' where "the upturned face of this land… that fell asleep under a migraine of headscarves and clatter… stretches awake… and returns to itself";

in 'Hill Stone was Content', the rock was "content to be cut and carted… conscripted into mills" and it "forgot it's earth-song in cement and the drum song of looms";

'Wild Rock' talks of "tamed rock" and "A people converting their stony ideas to woollen weave;

and then "Top Withens", the setting for Wuthering Heights, where "pioneer hope squared stones" but "Now it is all over… and the swift glooms of purple are swallowing the human shape from the freed stones".