walking home, 3pm

Arriving at Sumburgh Head Lightouse residency, my Shetland home for the next 3 weeks.

                    

A twenty four hour journey travelling the length of Britain, from London to Lerwick, Shetland.

The boat was a blur of darkness with a heavy sleep deprived head and a swinging stomach. I was the only one on deck to watch the flashing Christmas lights of Aberdeen disappear into darkness. 

I remember waking around midnight and the boat feeling motionless. We must be at Orkney, I thought. I half considered dragging myself out of bed to look at it in the darkness, but fell asleep again before the thought really formed. 

In the morning I went out on deck just as we were arriving into Lerwick and was surprised by the light. At 7am there was a glow on the horizon, and the men on deck took photographs of each other in the bright neon light. The air smelt like the sea, which you never get in Norway.

KH Messen paintings, November.

I walk through the passage, squeezing between sculpted forms, dusty feet and dusty legs. Hot sky and hot neck, small sips of hot water. I brush over in white and a pool forms, drips drips from the sky and beneath me there is a gleaming turquoise. It looks cold but it is hot, steaming. Along the cliff edge I hold onto the red rock and don’t look down. Don’t put your hands in dark places. Stamp so that they can feel you coming. I follow a muddy path that takes me through the trees but I am stuck in the foreground. Looking up, a great swathe of grey obscures even the trees but stops precisely at the dark water. This water is solid. 

I struggle through, climbing over the boulders that start off pink but darken as I move, collapsing under the weight of that grey sky. My neck is still hot and my mouth is still dry. I continue to climb out of this hole, step by step, the sweat running down my back. The sun moves and I am hit by a delicious pocket of cool air. It forms a pool of green on the ground but quickly evaporates. I take an apple out of my rucksack and eat it slowly, letting the juices sit on my tongue. 

I finally reach the top and brush the bright sky black until it leaks into the pink earth. It is a slow sun, I’d forgotten, and it takes me by surprise. The blue hovers and obscures the mountains so that I feel like I am looking at the sea. A veil of rain moves in and washes the dust off my ankles. 

back at Kunstnarhuset Messen residency in beautiful Ålvik, Norway

painting and playing with pigments from the american west