a difficult birth

I am visually very drawn to portrait format in pictures. With this as a preference, I began to think of how I wanted to capture the fen landscape. In my mind’s eye I was picturing a portrait format panel with a series of little silk fenscapes tumbling down, grading from the least to the most coloured, top to bottom. I had some silk pieces pinned to the board as a backing for the landscape and arranged the little panels on to it. The light was poor-such a grey and rainy day in the north light of the room. Everything was flat, no life, no spark, no play of shifting shadows and rippling corn. All wrong. Go away from this place.

*****

Time passes, the light does not improve but I ponder the grain of the silk. The bones of the land as seen in the silk need to be lying horizontally and I have them vertically. In portrait format. Fitting the space on my board. It is the space that is wrong. I am seeing portrait because that is the space I have free, but it’s wrong.

Lay everything on the floor in a tumble, just roughly reorientated and walk away. It is too dark, too late. There is still no light. No spark.

****

Time passes. Grey morning turns to sunshine and I haul everything through to a room with good light, push and move and rearrange and lay out threads and rearrange some more, and eat breakfast, then move it all back through to the board and re pin in landscape format. There’s a clue there. There is a wide view now, as in the fens. The portrait format has suggested another piece. For another day.

A difficult birth, but a birth. A spark of life to breathe on. Some stitches needed.