I have been cleaning and gardening around our house and came across a peculiar bell jar with pureed blackened berries cemented to the bottom like tar. It’s mad what you’ll find in an old house with plenty of history! Before chucking boiling water in it and dumping it down the drain I took some photos and did some edits to show its glistening gooeyness.
Some photos taking back from the Emerald Isle from this past winter. I find it so fascinating to observe the minute details that a single patch of earth provides in rural Ireland, every few feet there is something different to marvel at – a new collection of colours and textures that are only heightened during crisp, dewy winter mornings where the parts of the flora are submerged and stuck in its icy capture. Their tendrils like a miniature kraken raring to pounce or some sort of leggy thing cracking out of a shell and ready to usurp whatever living thing is staring at it.
Another batch of photography taken from the lagoon deep within the forest that inspired the Pools film that can be viewed here. I am currently in the process of setting up an online print on demand shop, where large scale prints of those photos can be purchased. It is an exciting venture that I have always dreamed of delving into and I’ve decided to jump head first!
Before plopping myself down on the earthy forest floor and hitting record on my camera to document the meditative ripples that transpire within the forestry lagoon that inspired the Pools Film, I took many photos that gave the same filmic effect and have superimposed them for that same elemental visage. With every falling drop of snow the resulting photograph is a drastic change from the last resulting in a plethora of different colours and textures – an addictive waiting game where I spent hours watching and capturing the unpredictability as it unfolded, listening to the many calming drip sounds so that I can snap away.
This weeks Kick about was Inspired by Ernst Haeckel and his botanical illustrations showing the intricate microscopic organic matter within nature that might otherwise go amiss. I have always felt sensitive to textures and colours but this year I actually had a camera to capture it with rural Ireland really ramping up my perception towards it. The merging of colours within a few feet of land can completely counteract the next a few feet further and always makes for interesting forms.
I love relishing in the patterns and forms that bloom on a log or that is sandwiched between the trenches of rich brown peat, losing a shoe in the quicksand esque mud with shite up to my knee to get some of these pictures is all part of the pleasure.
Witches broom deformities resembling sea urchins, little pastel snail shells with their inhabitants no more and reindeer moss resembling bleached coral reef all part of the treasures that are nestled within the designs resembling Haeckel’s pieces. Sometimes I would lie on the ground and aim up to the sky to get a certain shot of a branch, plant or twig without it being nestled with its family of flora so that it would be easier to edit and isolate the flora against a clean slate of sky.
A lot of the elements within my designs for this kick about were cut and pasted out of images like the ones above, then significantly editing them by changing the colour and then when all the elements came together I merged them as one and erased half of the image and then copied it one more time to then flip horizontally so they were in exact symmetry.
Gentle Giant 