Minimum

January 30, 2014March 30, 2015 ~ settleandchase ~ 25 Comments

I’m working on some new collages at the moment. There are so many decisions to make – how much to include, what works with what, how everything you add creates an extra layer of meaning – does that layer add interest or distraction? Too many choices!

Then sometimes I come back to the original, paired right down, and I like it with no alteration. This is the base that I am working with, an image from a few years ago. After exploring the thousands of possibilities, I’ve ended up now quite enjoying its space. I often come back this way, a confusion of noise, settled down to a few quiet lines.

I’ll post up the layered versions next time, would be good to hear what you think!

Memories of Forests and of Growing Small

November 20, 2012December 2, 2012 ~ settleandchase ~ 18 Comments

Since a young girl, I have always been intrigued by imaginings of size.

In nature, I loved to imagine how it would look to be grown tiny, and dropped into these places. I would often kneel, gazing deeply into small mossy nooks, through curled hillside bilberry strands, into tangles of branches and thorns. At the beach, I would find those deep, crusted and feathered green pools, gaze and mentally sink under the water and swim. I loved, and still love, to imagine a world changed size, trickle become river, thorn become tree..

Life to a spiders eye, a flea, a worm.

Sometimes, in bed at night, I had half awake dreams of becoming larger and smaller. My eyes tight closed, I lay and imagined. I could feel my hands, my legs, my torso, growing, then shrinking. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

It was almost a surprise to open my eyes and find myself the same size, I believed the imaginings so much.

My mum and I would play with pine cones in the wood near to our house, stacking them up to make “houses”, and singing the poetry by Pooh,

“Here is a myst’ry

About a little fir-tree

Owl says it’s his tree

And Kanga says it’s her tree”

I had forgotten all these things somehow, until my visit to the woods, and this picture came to be.

Winter Weather Work

July 10, 2012August 12, 2012 ~ settleandchase ~ 6 Comments

One dubious benefit about having a rubbish Summer weather wise is that I do more work!

I’ve been working on layered and digitally collaged images again over the past few months.

This is made almost entirely of photographs, some from my earlier work with shadows, some from photographs taken throughout the year.

I am pleased with how it looks somehow like a painting. Sadly I am terrible at painting, this is the closest I will ever get, painting with light and capture..