Time and Tires Roll Away at the Ness of Brodgar Orkney

All winter I have been preparing for this week at the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney.  It is the moment when the tyres and black plastic gets removed from the excavation site at the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney.  I am lucky to be one of the international artists-in-residence and will be based in a portable space.  With the help of the wonderful Jim Middlemas, one of the inside walls will be transferred into a stiff painting wall for some large canvas.  The first piece is one that I started during the winter.  I hope this piece will be a  bridge to what will come over the next 8 weeks.

The bridge for summer painting at the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney

Since I am lucky to be living in Orkney, this New Yorker will be bringing a collection of brushes that have crossed the Atlantic.  Some of these brushes are over 60 years old, having belonged to my mother.  I was a wee one messing around in her oil paints and learned to love the smell and that did help lead me into art.  I will be using mostly paintsticks…but more about that in a few days.

For now, it is time to see the circles that Peter Shackleton and I have had site of all winter, roll away.  We volunteered for a photography project.  I unwrapped and re-wrapped pottery small finds that had been noted as clear signs of once being some part of a pot.  Peter took the photos. The view from the window was black circles over the mud and stones of the excavation site. You might even be one of the volunteers helping to remove all of these on 2 July. http://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/repeat-call-for-volunteers-to-uncover-the-site/

Each week, I imagined what this week would be like and here it is! Monday, the artists portable studio will arrive. The blackness of the site will slowly be removed and light and colour will enter! I hope that using my paints and brushes on the actual site will add to whatever it is I find so inspiring about this amazing middle of the Orcadian Neolithic world.  Just like all the folks working in the trenches, I will be striving to uncover something different, paint something novel, reveal something and just plain old sit still between the lochs and revel in the moments of mystery.