I was hiking up Scarr mountain one day and on the way I walked through a landscape full of massive big boulders which were spread all around the landscape as if they had fallen like pebbles from the hand of a giant. At the moment when that thought came into my head I suddenly felt very small.
I climbed up onto some to see the view and nearer to the top of the summit they got bigger and bigger along the way. I could see for miles all round and then seeing the sea beyond I realised how close I was to the sea but yet so far away from it too. I felt a strange kind of parallel that relates to the wonders and concept of time. There is so much time and then there is none at all.
These are some of the questions and thoughts that come to my mind when out appreciating nature and taking in all that I can from it. Among many other things, it is moments like this drive me to paint and to reason out thoughts through my own creativity.
Here is a painting that was inspired by my hike that day titled ‘Standing on this rock, I can see the sea’, painted in oils mixed with cold wax.
‘Standing on this rock, I can see the sea’, 50cm x 50cm x 4cm
There are a lot of circular elements in nature and the universe that inform my art like these boulders, such as the tree rings of years on tree stumps, the coriolis force in the nature of the weather systems, the solar system, planets, and the cycle of time itself..
Derval Freeman 