North Light
During my Beach Hut residency, as part of the North Light Arts Festival in Dunbar (2012), I made a video The Dunbar Rowing Machine and the drawing Cove.
In the Year of Creative Scotland 2012, North Light Arts shone a spotlight on the creativity and the continuing inspiration of the Scottish fishing town of Dunbar in East Lothian. Over the summer, five key artists were invited to the Beach Hut for a week-long residency.
I set up my studio along the sea cliffs to make a large drawing of the coastline and harbour, Cove (10x1.5m on watercolour paper). Incorporating the red-brown sandstone as my muse, I ground some of it into pastel and used it compositionally to create the underpinning tone of the work.
The Dunbar Rowing Machine (HDV 5:14 min) presents the collaboration of vessel and human in combat with the sea. In the elemental location of Dunbar, a sojourn with the Ladies Skiff rowing team reveals the extraordinary ability of humans to function as machine: the sardonic title suggesting that in another town these ladies would be rowing in the very different environment of a gym, far away from the stunning, raw light and precariousness of the real experience.
