Notebooks – Photographs – Objects – Thoughts on the journey.
The summer of 2003. Six months in the mountains of British
Columbia. Much of the time camping.
Painting the immediate view. Drawing. Keeping a diary. Photography. Collecting objects which seemed to have stories.
Graphic responses to the total experience. Overwhelming and beautiful. Only small percentage shown here.
I was aware of being just over the border from the Cascade Mountains which had inspired Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac. Just over the Pacific from Japan and Zen, a significant influence for abstract expessionism. Thus Mountains and Rivers without End, Snyder’s book named after an ancient scroll painting also became the title for the large painting I made in Grand Forks.
Travelling, being away from my home environment, has made me understand I am a European artist, that however much I am wrapped up in a landscape and culture elsewhere, I am at heart at home in the small scale landscape of central England. It is against this that I measure other experience.