Setting off on my art residency, by train, from Halifax in Yorkshire to Nérac in the Lot-et-Garonne area in France, I acknowledged that my decision to travel overland by train, meaning that the research phase of the experience started from the moment I stood on the platform that morning. Perhaps fifty percent of the creative process for me is about observing, gathering, collecting, and collating, but just simply looking at one ‘view’ of the landscape never seems enough. An overland journey of this length gave me a rare opportunity to spend quality time observing, absorbing and thinking, whilst moving through the different landscapes and ‘socialscapes’ of Northern England to Southern France.
Foremost in my thoughts at that time, was my recent trip to west Cornwall and the colours, light and texture from the farthest southwest of England, coupled with the political quagmire, and looming economic/social disaster that we are facing right now in the UK. The journey, from the platform of the 7.10am to Kings Cross, to the doorstep at Studio Faire, offered so many interactions with different aspects of the landscape, of rural north and south, open fields, rolling hills, vast flatness, suburban decay/prosperity, inner city seediness, and, importantly, human and cultural interactions of every kind.
Visually, it was a rich experience and there was much of note. From an artist’s point of view, the changing colours, textures, light, weather conditions, flora and fauna, were more obvious, but also there were clues in the landscape that revealed the different social fabrics and unevenness of wealth distribution across the north/south. For example, the remains of derelict brick structures outside the stations at the beginning of my journey in the UK, which, under grey moody skies and drizzle, spoke of former industrial grandeur and enterprise, long gone and not repaired. Beyond these structures, left, right and centre, are newer buildings, juxtaposed over the decades since, disjointed, detached and somehow bolted onto the old.
Some observations looking outside from the train passing through the UK…
Galloping horses in a field, speeding away from the passing train
Lone man in the middle of a field, black trousers, white shirt, no dog
A second lone man in a field, no dog
A boarded-up station window, a sign ‘Grand Central’
Overgrown/abandoned sewage works
Neat stacks of pale gold hay bales
Stubbly, shorn, white yellow stalks, harvested fields
Dusty, cracked fields
Deer in a field x 4
Still pond, reflections
Heron
Egrets x 2
Trees
Pale yellow ochre, burnt sienna, pale cerulean blue-sky deepening to ultramarine up high, Payne’s Grey skies, fading sap green
Buzzard soaring on thermals
In Paris, emerging from the Metro at Montparnasse (from the Gare du Nord), there was a large fire, with tall lashing flames, blazing and growing alarmingly fiercer, outside the station. Looking through the glass wall in silence were a few spectators, travellers stopped in mid-transition. There were no sirens, no pompiers, hoses, and it was eerie and quite frightening – the recent summer wildfires were still smouldering in the south, the smoke even present in Paris at their height. This sight had a profound impact on me as I turned and headed off in the direction of the trains once more, worrying about the fire spreading as my train quietly rolled out of Paris.
Fire, Montmartre, Paris
Reflections, movement, light, ghosts
The next leg was a swift, efficient high-speed swoop to Bordeaux, a stop off overnight at the Hotel Particulier near the Gare St Jean. Over a salad and a glass of red (when in Bordeaux…), I reviewed my 8 pages of notes, drawings and scribbles. The landscape in the southwest was different, dry and rural, but interspersed with striped fields of vines, and, really interestingly, lines and lines of perfectly ordered trees (possibly firewood farms?). I’m certain the harsh, hot summer this year has affected French produce, and the landscape looked scorched, barren and dusty, the colours bleached, pale and brittle. I was struck by the collision of unusually hot air, tinder dry foliage, potential for fire, the snapping of parched stalks underfoot, and the shrinking of reservoirs, disappearing rivers and streams.
More observations…
Tall, thin trees, planted in neat lines
Vines also planted in neat lines
8 white birds flying over the vines
The Loire, Gironde and Garonne rivers, all wide and brown
Big, wide, pebbly, dry riverbed, revealed
Parched, scorched fields
Rows, lines, grids, order…
Language, communication, words…
Hotel Particulier, Bordeaux…
I haven’t mentioned the political aspect of my movement from England to France, but the fallout from Brexit was at the forefront of my thoughts as I travelled. It was hard not to compare the differences in our infrastructures, public transport, roads, prices, quality of fresh produce, and of course the freedom in France to move throughout the Schengen Area in Europe without restriction. Making/breaking connections with our European neighbours generated thoughts of: connections/bridges/links/tunnels/tracks/roads/borders/fences/doors/barriers/beaurocracy/politics/checks/cutting/racism/humanity/friendship/nationalism/fear (and fascism?). These issues are all tied up with economics, society, culture, and the current political agenda, both nationally and globally.
I had been deliberately quite open about my project at Studio Faire, and much has changed in my practice since I applied in 2019. Arriving in Nérac, my notebook full of observations, I creaked open the studio shutters and hit the ground running.
Next blog – the really exciting bit; exploring, experimentation, new colour palette, discoveries, live broadcast…
A little of what came next…
Disclaimer - taking photos from a moving train is not the best way to get good quality photographs…