Returning to the stone circle as subject matter, and another painting, after the recent 'Castlerigg' example, based on historical sketches and a particular photograph taken on location during a snowstorm.
The circle is not, like Castlerigg, an ancient monument, but, rather, a more modern structure, erected in the 1960s on the top field in Flint, North Wales, to commemorate the staging of the 'Eisteddfod' cultural festival - a feast movable all over Wales - in the town, and is composed of twelve standing stones arranged in circular form with a further collection of stone laid in the centre, in the style of a plinth with irregular 'steps' on all four sides. The tallest of the standing stones (probably the slightly most distant one as represented, at the left-hand edge of the plinth) is perhaps 6 feet in height.
Growing up there, and in the top end of town, it's something - a thing, an object, composed of objects, a static arrangement like a still life in the landscape - that I encountered on very many occasions, indeed daily over a period of years, more often in passing, sometimes to stop and contemplate. At various points, I photographed and drew the circle, and it is these records as they exist that inform this particular painted image, which thus embodies both specific and more general memories.
'Spectral Stone Circle #1: Snowstorm'
oil on canvas/16" x 20"/June 2019
The size of the painting is rather smaller on this occasion, a deliberate attempt at experimentation with questions of scale, and, whilst retaining evidence of its brush-marked, hand-made nature, has less thickly physical a surface than the larger Castlerigg predecessor, not least in an attempt to communicate something of a 'spectral' nature which is an idea that I'm considering exploring as a theme from an interest in the nebulous concept of 'hauntology', something introduced into my frame of reference via music and related artwork (primarily the wonders of the Moon Wiring Club and the Blank Workshop) about ten years ago and which continues to exercise a particular fascination.
