12 Furlongs to the Sea. A meditation. 2017

Returning to Wales after 30 years is a spiritual homecoming. 12 Furlongs is a visual representation of my response to a patch of land battling against the elements of wind, sea and sand that I have been walking for the last six years.

It is a healing process and a reawakening of the senses.

I had lost the ability to stand still.

Hear the silence.

Smell the dank air.

Newborough forest is not a rich leafy ancient woodland established over centuries. It is a product arising from post war government intervention to attempt to control the natural elements. The passage of time is always apparent, the seasons, the shifting light. The toll of years of wind and brine defeating the trees at the sea edge resemble a Nash war landscapes and revoke a metaphor of the British post war political journey.

The images are deceptively simple, their richness is only revealed with space and time to experience it.

Often it is fleeting.

The blossom came and went so quickly. The intenseness of the most “‘blossomiest blossom,” witnessed by Dennis Potter, described in an interview shortly before his death.

I am not sure it is possible to capture the intensity of the blossom.

However this is an attempt to do so and celebrate the experience.

Intensified by age.

Intensified by the relatively confined space of 12 furlongs.

Intensified by my desire to share my response to this humble patch

in the medium I feel is my first language.