Well, we’ve made it through a dark, dreich January – a contender for the most miserable in living memory with only 48 hours of sunshine in the whole of the UK.
Here in North Fife we’ve been on the edge of some truly biblical weather, with seemingly constant rain and storms lashing the North East of Scotland. Flooding across Perthshire, Angus and Aberdeenshire has made for a pretty grim start to the year for many folk. The first day of February teased us with lovely warm sunshine; alas it was a one off and we’ve been plunged back into dankness since with no change forecast.
Which is perhaps why the first thing I made this year reflected my yearning for warmer, happier days…
‘Memories of an Island’ is inspired by two places very dear to my heart – Argyll and the Isle of Arran. Many years ago my parents had a little cabin in Argyll and it was an escape from real life, a place to relax and reset. We would spend our days exploring, tootling along empty single track roads, visiting tiny villages, roaming around forests and beaches. I even married my other half there, on an old stone pier on the shores of Loch Fyne.
There was a beautiful beach – tucked away, hidden from the road, only accessible on foot. A secret bay, not signposted, not easily discovered. The first time we went there was a sunny spring day, still a little on the chilly side but a taste of warmer days ahead – the perfect day for a ramble. My parents had given us directions to a hidden beach, to be found at the end of a half hour walk. At the end we would be rewarded with the most spectacular view of Arran, 8 miles south across the water…
I’ve been carrying this memory for 25 years, and it takes me back to a quieter, simpler time, before some very dark days indeed; before Big Life Stuff happened, before the world became inescapable, before the lunatics took over the asylum.
This is the thing about creativity, the thing I love most about making my work – it allows me to take refuge for a while, to return to loved and long lost places. I can also go to places that I’ve only been to in my imagination. A customer recently paid me a huge compliment when they said my pieces have a remarkable yearning or loneliness to them – to know that I have managed to communicate those emotions in my work is a very special thing indeed.
It occurs to me that I rarely go into the finer details of how I actually make my little scenes…probably because it’s a very long and laborious process! Endless hours are spent designing and tweaking before I get to the fun part – cutting, painting and assembling. Over the last year I have introduced a lot of mount board which I discovered works really well, and allows me to cut almost to a hair’s width. This enables me to create even more fine detail, depth and layering into my 1.5cm frame allowance.
I think I’ve mentioned before how it’s been fun seeing how far I can push the laser cutter:
Here’s a peek at my latest piece of laser cutting: the berries are so small they fell straight through the laser grid and had to be retrieved with tweezers!
As always, you can find out what I’m up to by following me on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. But I’ll be back soon, hopefully with news of better weather and some exciting developments!
Thanks for reading and TTFN,
Cal x
HooperHart 