waterfall

I had found a nature condenser: a stone and water chamber saturated with noise, plants and animals. Updraughts buffeted insects, leaves and branches. Protean, the water changed colour, speed and texture. And when the sun came out the scene fragmented in ways that defied imagination.
I made an oil study, and later began a big canvas only to put it aside to work in a field in Essex. But I didn't forget this fall: its distinctive shape fused with a memory of that first impression of natural richness into a kind of emblem.
Painting is a way of making first hand contact with nature - think of Cézanne or Constable. In this tradition there is an assumption that we don't know what things look like and that painting offers a unique way of finding out.
Compared to an object on a table, a waterfall is almost impossible to see. At a distance they often have distinctive shapes, but close up they look chaotic. This combination of stability and instability is part of their facination. It's as though they are telling you that you can and can't see them, that their permanence is true and not true.
The images in Waterfall show how one spot gives many different visions of water. You don't have to travel to see variety. The paintings exploit different sources - oil studies, drawings, notes and photos, with digital analysis and re-organisation in the studio.
WORK IN PROGRESS
click images
SUMMER POSTCARD 1

SUMMER POSTCARD 2

FINISHED PAINTINGS
furnace falls : amlder y dyfroedd
WATERFALLS ON THE FENS
This shifted the way I saw my paintings. They still looked truthful but, like cards through the post, I could see them more easily as an imagined place. I also saw that, as with a post card, a painting could bring to mind an imagined map - in my case a mental map of England and Wales. So, with a sense of sharing something with thousands of senders and receivers of post cards, past and present, I began to collect cards of Furnace falls.


This is one posted in 1906 in Eglwysfach, the village by the fall where the sender lived, at Ty-mawr - literally 'big house'. It was addresed to The Liverpool Royal Infirmary with a message in Welsh* which reads
It was good to hear from you and to know you are improving and have got through the operation very sucessfully. You will be as strong as a horse again, like before. After sending this I'm going to Festiniog today or tomorrow.
Jim.


By permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales
NATURAL IMAGES
How we imagine waterfalls concerns us all.
WELSH TITLES

The Welsh titles for these paintings come from conversations with Gerald Morgan. I often heard Welsh as I grew up but have no Welsh myself; however Gerald is a Welsh speaker and scholar.
* Souvenir spoon cameo designed for Sampson Souvenirs, now Judge Sampson Ltd. With thanks to Non and John Griffiths of Eglwysfach, who commissioned and sold this souvenir.
* Post card translation by William Troughton, Visual Images Librarian, National Library of Wales.
* For a contemporary discussion of local language and nature, see Robert MacFarlane's book Landmarks.
Special thanks to Elfed Wyn Jones and Anwyn for sound recordings of Welsh picture titles.
