Burnt Offerings / The New Black
Sleek black glistening fragments lie scattered at the lip of the ranger’s charcoal burner, I had tagged along with a ‘party’ cleaning and re-jigging the flues during my first visit on Arran.
In amongst the abundant flora, fauna and geology of the island a few materials – and colours – stand out and have become the start points for ideas. First among these is charcoal black.
In the woods and gardens of the estate, rangers and gardeners – with the support of volunteers – seek to keep rhododendrons in check; their spread denies light to forest floors and within the gardens, the aim is to halt the spread of a fungal-like disease. Once cut the branches are burnt in situ creating charred circles on the cleared earth, the limbs are transported to the charcoal burner. The ‘good’ charcoal is sold in the shop, whilst 3 sacks of the unsellable stuff – the half-burnt and the dust – sit in my workspace.
Moving Mountains
Standing staring at G E Hering’s ‘View of Brodick Bay’ something is not right, a castle guide has seen the problem before and comes over to help out “the mountains are in the wrong place”. She’s right; Goatfell can’t be where he’s painted it.
Before catching the ferry, with time on my hands, I try to locate where he would have set up easel. Back home I overlay my photos with the print to investigate what he’s done.
If I triangulate shore and castle with the tip of Goatfell then the sweep of the bay and backs of the lower hills carry on well beyond what would make a nice composition of ‘a bay’; if I scale for: shoreline, height of Goatfell and headland, then both mountain and castle speed away to the right of their start locations. It’s what artists do: manipulate, re-imagine and change, but it’s curious how – as spectator – I want to see how it ‘really was’ when I know ‘really’ never was.
Scotland and the Russian Doll
4 days after arriving on Arran I left again – briefly – to attend the conference: Imagining Natural Scotland. The first speaker Colin Tudge warned of the dangers of imagining Scotland in isolation, instead he suggested we see it as a microcosm, a ‘stand in’ for the planet. Having just witnessed first-hand how Arran appears to be a ‘Scotland in miniature’, there emerged a vision – rather like the Russian nesting dolls – of Scotland as stand-in for ‘planet’, Arran for Scotland, The NTS estate on Arran, with its blend of shoreline, formal gardens, woodlands and fell as ‘stand-in’ for Arran; so that in turn I began to envisage the residency process becoming yet a further nesting doll in the sequence. Which could be considered a pretty tall order, however – again at the conference – we were reminded to: Think global, Act local.
“… pine woods have a strange habit of wandering…”
I love that sentence Sara Maitland’s “Gossip from the Forest”. Her explanation is that you cannot coppice or pollard Scots pines. Cut they are killed, they will not regenerate on their old roots and the seeds tend not to grow under the canopy of the parent tree: “… pine woods crawl across the hill sides, changing the shape of the land.”
Nothing stays the same.
In the gardens of Brodick, Tree Ferns – native of New Zealand – have self-seeded wherever they like… and they like it here.
First day – first beguiling walk – I’m standing at the foot of a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum); one of the largest, most peculiar trees on the planet, there tucked at its base I spot a wee native oak, unplanned and shocking in its fragility and familiarity of form. I pull out my notebook and write ‘nature of change’.
