Enter the SONDAGE

 NOTE:  SEEMS this post never posted, so nearly a year from when I wrote it I am posting it!  I am again out at the Ness painting, but smaller….More to come about this year, meanwhile….

I could only fall in love with word SONDAGE knowing that as the painting was growing it was a MONTAGE of moments that grabbed me. 

I was attracted to these rectangles cutting through the layers.

So the word SONDAGE reached out and grabbed me along with the personality of Dr. Jo McKenzie.  Jo is a micromorphologist archaeologist….and yes that is a mouthful.  She is the reason why there are these interesting rectangles pushed into the earth that clearly showed layers.

Dr. Jo McKenzie works on extracting the last few samples from Trench T.

I filmed Jo as she removed with painstaking care, the last sample from Trench T.  She swaddled the sample with layers of cling film.  Yes, it was like a birth! That last sample had a rock stuck into it, which Jo carefully removed and it will be part of the exhibition scheduled for Tankerness House, Kirkwall in December of my project as artist in residence at the Ness this summer.  The exhibition will have more than my paintings as the whole summer is about collaborating on the archaeology that has drawn so many people to it.

Concentrating on these two large area of sondage, the painting highlights them both with layers of earth colour spreading out and around the rest of the painting. There is a kind of bridge between the two soil areas in Trench T which also appears like a step or two. https://sketchfab.com/models/cb231e389c5844d98d0037a0bd8ce1d3?ref=related 

I have tried to capture this as well as the mysterious and numerous depressions that were throughout Trench T