Slow, Bright Immensity (triptych)
2022
Acrylic on canvas, unframed
300 x 80 x 4cm
This river has been an industrialised river and often we swim in the shadows of mills beside crumbling wharves and sluices. There is a poetry to it, a ruined majesty and the definite sense of the human impact. The mills of this now serene place alive with birds and fish, rose and fell within 200 years, and 200 years is no time at all in the deep time of this river. So she continues, just as the glacier that carved this valley did thousands of years ago, gradually regaining her meander and grinding stone imperceptibly, atom by atom into gravel and sand. And with every storm Wharfe moves the stones a-ways and eventually they will sink back into the ground they were once delved from. These days there is a stately peace, wildlife has returned to the river in my lifetime, but there is also a melancholic air, and a feeling of urgency given that, as with all of our neglected rivers, Wharfe is once again under threat from human activity. The title is borrowed from West Yorkshire poet and visionary, Ted Hughes.
Slow, Bright Immensity (triptych)
2022
Acrylic on canvas, unframed
300 x 80 x 4cm
This river has been an industrialised river and often we swim in the shadows of mills beside crumbling wharves and sluices. There is a poetry to it, a ruined majesty and the definite sense of the human impact. The mills of this now serene place alive with birds and fish, rose and fell within 200 years, and 200 years is no time at all in the deep time of this river. So she continues, just as the glacier that carved this valley did thousands of years ago, gradually regaining her meander and grinding stone imperceptibly, atom by atom into gravel and sand. And with every storm Wharfe moves the stones a-ways and eventually they will sink back into the ground they were once delved from. These days there is a stately peace, wildlife has returned to the river in my lifetime, but there is also a melancholic air, and a feeling of urgency given that, as with all of our neglected rivers, Wharfe is once again under threat from human activity. The title is borrowed from West Yorkshire poet and visionary, Ted Hughes.