Narratives, Collected

​A yellow manila envelope. It was always from my grandfather's textiles office in New York, marked with a red Airmail stamp. Par Avion. Printed matter. And in his capitalised handwriting, addressed to my mum. Sometimes a letter; sometimes photos; a newspaper clipping from my grandmother, marked with her scripted thoughts on who would find it of interest. Today, something for my sister and I: A pack of blue paper, too precious to look at in the light. Ten sheets of paper that were to last us, one piece at a time, for a decade: so magical was the formation of an image in front of our eyes using just sunlight and water. We had no idea what made it work. That's the awe of magic: not knowing. Being amazed by the ordinary turned astonishing. The unremarkable becomes wonderful.

In time, the conjuror's trick was revealed. Now, waiting for nightfall in the high summer evenings, when the damaging light seeps through the cracks in the studio blinds until late into the northern dusk; like an alchemist, I mix my own magic: the cyanotype solution. Then to paint with the moss green liquid: Sometimes as the first thoughts, sometimes onto paintings or drawings: revealing sections, colours, marks, thoughts, memories. By day, I take the paintings into the garden; the landscape; to the Spanish mountainsides of rosemary, and lavender scented cliffs; up the sides of Yosemite valley, along the Merced river below; to the great forests of Sequoia; the bluffs of the Pacific coast, the dunes of the Atlantic...

Waiting... watching... blood tingling in my motionless arms... a breeze blows, a cloud passes, chance encounters... thinking... breathing... collecting movements, memories, a portrait of the moment...

... I turn them into photographic paintings: in which light and time are my mediums. Images capturing the tangible moment when the elemental forces of sunlight and the winds of time are frozen into being by the fresh babbling water of a stream; a hotel sink running sharply with snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains; the garden hose water warmed by the midday heat; the salty sea of the Mediterranean. Scratched, and scarred by tumbling pebbles, fine grains of sand and silt, all leaving their mark. Memories of the azure sky, captured. Narratives collected, recorded, and evident as physical happenings, by the very elements of life.