Towards a New Design

I’ve been thinking a lot about my small stones practice and how much I am enjoying evoking a moment’s conscious experience into a condensed phrase. So, when I started to consider a change in the design of this site, I set myself a task: to write a series of small stones that captured the essence of how I want my site to look*.

I took each of these small stones from very vivid visual memories that span the years from around 3 to 30, and, as I read through them, I see certain similarities cropping up, themes which are on the verge of announcing themselves… What patterns, themes etc. can you see in the following stones?

Mrs Johnson’s backroom glass cabinet filled with coloured glassware. Pinks, greens, turquoises, blues and golds. Glittering in the late afternoon sun casting colours on the wall behind.

A trip to the beach. Long hot day, face and skin dry and stiff with salt water. Sand sticking to sun lotion. We stand to pack up and my foot shifts some sand to reveal a blue and pink gem – my mother’s opal earring.

My parents’ bedroom crammed full with dark wood furniture – bed, wardrobe, bedside cabinet, dressing table. Bought from an antiques shop that used to be a cinema. On each piece of furniture a mother of pearl butterfly hovers in stasis. Milky white against mahogany dark.

Octons. Eight-sided octagonal pieces of coloured perspex, each with slots cut into every second side. Building perspex structures towards my bedroom ceiling, their colours altering as the light passes through their double thickness. Blue+pink=purple. Red+yellow=orange.

Walking to the bus stop, soles slapping the wet tarmac, leaping to avoid a large puddle spilling out across the pavement. Polluted by petrol, the puddle becomes a medium for displaying a chemical rainbow. Peacock blue, kingfisher green, sunset pink.

A trip to the National Gallery and my first sight of John Duncan’s St Bride. The profound Scottishness of the painting with its inquisitive seal, the choppy blue green waters and the swooping gulls juxtaposed with the brilliant wings of the angels – exotic birds flying through a pastel perfect sky.

Sitting in church, my attention drifting from the sermon to focus on the dust motes dancing in the streams of coloured light flooding through the stained glass windows.

A clear quartz crystal hung up on the curtain pole, spinning on its invisible thread casting rainbows that skitter across beige carpets and skin.

Gauzy curtains of blue, green and violet that flutter in the breeze of my first flat. I lie flat on my back staring up at them shiver in the draft of ill-fitted windows.

A new box of Caran D’ache coloured pencils neatly ordered according to the rainbow shades laid out by Newton. Each coloured point resonating with a clear note of raw potential.

* I should say that while I’ve changed the look of this site, I’m only trying it on for size and it will probably change again as I don’t feel it properly conveys the feel or the focus of the content.