Think small. Go deep.
and keep on digging till you get to the source
In the studio, I’ve been working on a single large piece for several weeks now. It’s more of a drawing than a painting, or perhaps it’s something in between. I’m still maybe only halfway done.
On one level, it’s a response to the movements of water in the atmosphere; clouds, mists, especially the way salt spray hangs in the air, blown up off the sea, how it makes a glittering fog of the blue sky, fading its colour towards the horizon. So I’m calling it ‘This Salted Light’…although I reserve the right to change my mind!
On another level it’s a drawing that’s an unfolding of time, of patience, of repetition, of stillness, of covering the same ground over and over and over and over.
It’s a test too, of tenacity, of keeping the faith, of riding out the waves of hope and disappointment that arrive after that first buzz of inspiration fades.
Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in.” She counsels her future self to ride out the inevitable ups and downs.
This picture isn’t quite such an undertaking as a whole book but still the ‘doubts creep in’: is it going to be worth the hundreds of hours of painstaking labour? As I shared a couple of weeks ago, sometimes I question my repetitiveness. Maybe I should experiment, do new things? I admit to some performance anxiety: last year I won a big painting award to support the development of new work. I have to show something for it! Is it going to be any good?
I don’t know. I can’t know. I have no choice but to keep going, into the fog.
But making this drawing has given me plenty of time to think, to feel longeurs of time, to see time gathering visibly, inch by inch, and to notice how time can have both duration and depth, if we care to sink into it.
We are mostly like pond skaters on a river, skittering across the surface of experience.
But a creative practice, be that writing or making or drawing, is a recursive one, that draws us back to a moment to reinhabit it, to stay in it long enough to experience its depths, its layers and connections. To pay attention.
Every day I watch the water moving in and through and around this little patch of ground, this island I call my home. I beat the bounds of my parish, walking the same paths. I don’t stray far. Every day I draw my lines, repeating the same tiny movement over and over and over, layer over layer.
The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote:
“To know fully even one field or land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience.”
For Kavanagh, the parish was not a narrowing but an aperture: a keyhole through which the world could be seen. ‘Parochialism is universal,’ he wrote. ‘It deals with the fundamentals.’
To know one field, one land, one body of water, one small loch, one unremarkable stream, one short stretch of foreshore. Not the whole, not the everything, not the expansive view, but the particular, the smallest part, the daily round. It’s more than enough. I apprentice myself to this place and its waters. There’s no need to go off questing after mysteries and epiphanies. There’s enough to learn right here.
I found an old sketchbook from about twenty years ago, long before I moved to Orkney. In it I had written the following words: “Think Small. Go Deep.”
As one of our wonderful Life Raft co-working participants said at the end of our session a couple of weeks ago: “When you want to dig a well you stay in one spot and you keep on digging till you get to the source.”
Thank you for that Lainey. I’ll keep digging right here.
If you’re a painter based in Scotland this year’s RSA MacRobert Trust Award has just opened again for applications. Why not give it a whirl?
Join me on the Life Raft this week
Our weekly Zoom co-working session is at 3pm UK time every Wednesday. You are welcome to join us as we weave a web of creative connections and quiet companionship. I’ve extended it a little at the end to give us a bit more time to share as we draw the session to a close, if you’re able stay on.
And if you can’t make it along, here’s a link to last week’s session replay. The passcode is: D70=g6D.
I’m so glad you’re here, journeying along with me. This newsletter is free. As an experiment in generosity I have not paywalled anything. It is a great joy to me to find that so many of you have responded with like generosity and chosen to upgrade to paid. Thank you for making The Life Boat feel like a mutual exchange of warm generosity rather than a cold transaction.
Until next week’s sailing, that’s all from me!
Sam
Interesting reflections, as always, Sam. I like the title of your piece, it spoke to me because I'm just embarking on my MA project about salt from Cheshire. Here, it's buried underground rather than in the mists of water, so I shall have to go deep as I explore parallels between my place and its material.
I liked the parallels you drew between your drawing and the repetitive tracing of paths in your area, much like salt's various journeys from its source here over the years.
So lovely and welcoming: reflections and painting and title; thank you. I like “This Salted Light” and hope you choose to keep it, in due time.
I also wonder if a new title for a future work has been born: “mysteries and epiphanies”.