Friday, September 13, 2013

Water in a dry place.

A recurring theme in my work is that of water - a lack of it, too much of it,  a bowl of it or a cloud full of it. I have explored this theme from many aspects. I save water in my home, work not pollute our oceans and stand up for clean water for everyone. Water is precious and we need it far more than many of the other things that we think we need.

A theme that I keep coming back to in my paintings and photos is that of a pool of water in an otherwise dry landscape. The initial inspiration was a farmers dam at sunrise while on a road trip in 1992. It burned in to my imagination so deeply I have neither forgotten it or shaken the impulse to explore it.



In Botswana, we drove through a landscape in the driest stretch of it's dry season. Rain hadn't been seen in months and water holes were cracked, parched reminders of what had been. In Savute we found that the marsh had (in the mysterious way that it does) started to fill a few weeks prior, despite i tbeing in the driest months of the year. A possible tectonic shift had sent water flowing back in to the landscape from a distant source.  Small streams and rivulets ran from the river which flowed to the marsh and seeped  in to the cracked-dry earth. Once the ground was water-logged, pools formed.

The blue of the sky mirrored in the water's surface and contrasted with the dry-yellow of the grasses all around. Tell-tale green shoots were coming up all around, even well away from the pooling of water, sensing the return of moisture. New life, hope, food, relief and a study in contrasts.

Water in a dry place.