“MarchLands” artworks: introduction
“whaleback shadow dancers”
the marchlands paintings are a taking of responsibility to honour the ancient Marchlands of south east Scotland and north Northumbria in England. These artworks were made between 2016 and 2024. they honour the vast historical presence of these lands, this includes the more-than-human deep time presence, the ancient original human presence - who themselves honoured this place as a sacred land, and the present hugely diminished remnant wild nature.
These works are the products of depth ecological attunement within these Marchlands. This process began by walking its network of trails and pathways, many of these trails are ancient and some were most likely originally more-than-human tracks.. others are both historic and modern human-made trails. Much of this network is determined by its ancient salmon river and its tributaries winding their way through the lowlands, they are a central vein for its organic life and a core sustainer of human life here. These lands have been walked by humans for millennia and this river and its environs have had human inhabitants for the last ten thousand years, since the retreat of the last ice age. For the first five thousand of those years it was home to our aboriginal forbears. These original people knew this river as a sacred spirit who's personhood carried the connective psyche and energy of this place across both the physical and spirit realms. She was revered, this is how these people understood their environment.
This river, this central vein of life, communicates the connective presence of both past and present and for both human and more-than-human persons, a veritable repository for the history of the ritual ceremonial dance of life enacted in its sphere across time. Our aboriginal forbears were very careful in their honoring of this great spirit river and its wider environs, in their taking care and in their reciprocity. They were astute caretakers of the great bounty of this life source. In the present this significantly depleted and degraded river system still offers the intelligence and knowledge of a remnant multiplicity of life, living on the margins of the human-made world. This includes the Salmon, the Cormorant, the Heron, the Swan and the Otter and a multiplicity of Other. They continue to offer totemic relationships and remain a true source of understanding the sacredness of this place, they are true Initiators of its Earth wisdom
In the beginning days after my arrival in this place while undertaking the business of honoring and walking its trails, I came across two isolated Scott’s Pine trees, they were displaced from other trees because of housing development. They seem strangely unimportant and invisible, they are just part of the background, incidental to modern human life. But for me they were magnificent, very beautiful Beings, I immediately saw their significance as steadfast more-than-human persons within this wholly disfigured and changed nature environment, they drew from me powerful feelings of deep respect. At each encounter I was drawn more and more into their sphere of influence, into a sense of mutuality. While standing with them I felt a strong fusion, of being rooted, connected to the earth, as if I were part of their deep root and fungal network communicating with an invisible world. A powerful sense of entwining and grounding, my own physical and psychic network merging with their expansive connectivity, being part of their deeply layered Earth intelligence. Cascades of their Earth scents enveloped my presence, intoxicating, invigorating and calming in equal measure. I began to understand that I had determinedly involved myself in a depth connective encounter with these trees, an expansive initiatory encounter a totemic encounter. I recognised these great pines as Earth guides, I entered into a depth connective relationship with them. I intuitively understood their Initiatory potential in my attunement process, in my seeking an entry point into the very soul of this place. My intimate visceral identification with these two persons gave me the ground for a transitional Rite of passage. My engagement in this transformational encounter powerfully reshaped my psycho-ecological receptivity, opening and joining me to the ancient ancestral presence embedded in this land, opening me to its depth ''connective'' mind and the responsibilities that go with this joining. My reciprocal responsibility was clear, my painting had to be an instrument for telling the depth ecological stories of this place, a way of communicating the transcendent Earth wisdom embedded in this place. I began to undertake the painting of primordial Image Stories that embody and express this ancient narrative.
My very first painting here was an intuitive, psychic story of the lost nature, it is called ''Ghost Pines''.
“ghost pines”
This crossing of the psycho-ecological threshold of this land connected me to the profound eviscerating losses embedded in its history. The deeply painful loss of its vast ancient biome: its woodlands, its wetlands and its grasslands, the loss of the Bear, the Wolf, the Lynx, the Beaver, the Wild Horse and the Auroch, the loss of its aboriginal human forebears, the great loss of its multiplicity of life, the loss of its entire ecosystem. I experience being deeply viscerally connected with this profound loss. It shapes all understanding of what can be known and seen in this place. This is a live and vivid clarifying emergence, it brings into clear consciousness the deep account of our species, what we are responsible for and the responsibility we all still have. It was this deep sense of loss that provided a bridge, an enhanced clarity of the present critical context of our relationship with our Earthland, a greatly advanced, deeper visceral understanding. This expansive wounding experience opens to clear view the sacredness of this place and the sacredness of the elemental presence of this place. It lays bare the true and profound responsibility we all have to our Earthland, even as this is ignored and denied by generation after generation, millennia, after millennia by us modern humans.
This Initiatory experience prepared me for an opening of my consciousness to the personhood of the whaleback mountain who is sometimes visible and then sometimes completely invisible, always awaiting our proper attention. She sits amongst an ancient volcanic range overseeing the whole scape of these lands, overseeing the totality of the history of these fertile Marchlands. She is the touchstone for understanding the long story of this place, the story of reciprocity and balance, the story of Earth unity and of course the story of human exploitation and evisceration. Her vast history sets the tone for all the transactions of honoring life here, she embodies the wisdom of nature, she embodies the soul of this place. This Whaleback Mountain communicates the sacredness of all of nature, of this foundational earth knowledge erroneously ignored by most modern humans to our and the worlds great detriment.
This depth connective relationship to the actual sentient and animate presence of this place and the engagement in a primordial painting process has offered up ancient ancestral stories and a considerable education. Ancient figures, ancient presence and the great characters of its present totemic more-than-human persons have emerged into painted Image Stories enacting their ritual ceremonial dance of life and their honoring of connective nature. These visual stories transpose into Initiatory and developmental entities and provide windows into the connective intelligence of the Earthland. They become visual guides in the process of understanding ecological wisdom. Ancient figures permeate this whole land and tell their vital and critical stories of ecological maturation and connective Earth unity. They tell the story of its multiplicity of life, of its remnant and physically disappeared original nature including its original humans. Enduring ancestral presence and influence govern every aspect of the psycho-ecological process of making these painted Earth stories and interpreting them into their dynamic character and their emergent ecological narrative.
These works are dedicated to the Whaleback Mountain who has resided in this place for 400 million years and whose “personhood” is hardly recognised by us modern humans today. Yet she holds the story of deep time transformation, resilience and continuity far beyond human preoccupation. Paying her due respect and recognising her personhood and understanding her wisdom is the golden opportunity for the humans of this place to understand and learn reverence and find the humility required of them to honour nature and survive into the future in unity within nature.