The name "holloway" is derived from "hola weg" meaning sunken road in old English. Our home in North Cornwall is surrounded by a tangled web of these ancient structural by ways. The amorphous forms of trees toppling from gnarled and rooty banks - the traditional Cornish hedgerow at its finest and for me further stimulating subject matter.
As a keen runner I have in recent years spent many hours pounding the tarmac around these lanes. They are the perfect training ground for me both in terms of maintaining physical fitness and further fuelling creative inspiration. I always carry my iPhone with me and have taken hundreds of photographs.
I really enjoy the sense I get of being inside these spaces which at times appear like tunnels or labyrinths particularly when running at night in the dark. The image below was taken on a night run and I didn't stop to take it hence the blurry effect which I think by chance works really well.
I found creating a photo collage (see top of page) to be the best starting point for this inspiration as well as a chance to do something with my multitude of photographs. I began by selecting a number of images to print out in black and white. The decision to remain monochromatic linked this work with my very recent (still in part ongoing) "Refuge Series" the output of which is largely tonal and comes from exploring the boundaries between the inner and outer landscape of the body inspired by sitting in stillness under a hedgerow hidden, safe and peaceful. I therefore felt that the inclusion of the figure hidden within the collage was important in communicating my sense of what it felt like to be inside these spaces.
The collage turned out unexpectedly well as a piece of art work in its own right certainly in terms of communicating about what it feels like to me being in these spaces. I have also used it as a starting point for further work creating from it a series of small paintings using the blind abstract process (see below). These pieces work well in themselves but also have great potential in terms of further future development.
