minty blue
writing about pleasure + gathering colour on a grey day
“Make a list of what pleases you, all for yourself, not because your mom, girlfriend, your aunt likes it… Now write for ten minutes about one pleasure on the list. It is a very kind act to take a friend’s hand and show them the pleasure you have in something… Don’t demand that the reader like what you like. Begin slowly and gently and show your pleasure in something.”
Natalie Goldberg - Wild Mind.
STARTING POINT: The pleasure - Walking alone on quiet beaches.
Writing freely for 20 minutes.
Keeping the hand moving. Not worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation or sense making. Written up with additional sentence structure for ease of reading.
I love walking on quiet beaches. Alone is pretty important. It means it is just me and the knobbly cliff rocks, all strata and deep time. Bending us into hills. The salty sea eroding, one tide at a time.
I love the vast expanse of sand you get on some beaches where if you were to run with joyous giggling from the pebbles by the car park to the lapping shallows you might stop and need to catch your breath half way there, or at least slow down to a speedy walk. Feet slapping on wet sand, your prints disappearing soon after you made them.
I love the space. The clean, clear, unencumbered space of it. The tiny humans with a dog you might catch sight of half a mile down. (I’m reminded of the scene in Father Ted where Ted is explaining to Dougall the difference between tiny cows and cows that are just far away.)
I’m not averse to shallower beaches, with all of this talk of sandy expanses. Your rocky, core strength demanding, crustacean and seaweed covered boulders are equally a curious place, but a whole other encounter altogether. Those spots are about the details. The ducking and diving up and over, working out where to place your next foot. A dance with the earth’s core, brought to the surface by ever present moon pulled waters.
You need your wits about you for a rocky shore. To spot the particularly jellied seaweed that would have you plummeting onto your knees if you mindlessly stepped on it.
The open sands are about horizon, perspective, distance, striding.
The shallower, knobbly, stonier coast is where colour hunting can take place. Pebbles fit for rubbing against each other to see if they rub off their muted oranges, reds, blue-greys and yellows. A field test for future paint making. The shiny flints and crystal like gems are not fit for this purpose, unless you have elbow grease by the vat and/or industrial tools to assist in breaking it down to dust.
I am sat in a coffee shop on Clevedon water front. Wales across the Severn is invisible behind mist. The outside climate reptilian in its cold, grey moisture. The pier a soft hospital mint green. The colour of nurses’ scrubs and toilet walls. Homely, comforting, clinical.
This beach is not quite a beach, says the west Walian. The Pembrokeshire missing part that has grown up with great expanses, waves that rollout of the shallows for miles, it would feel. White horses and the soft roar of pebbles and gallons of salty welsh water. Momentarily welsh. I wonder where that molecule has been before now…and that one. Has it floated, roared and waved over from Cuba, or the Algarve, Greenland or the Outer Hebrides? Changed its state to ice and steam, rain and salt dried on skin and rock. Oxygen and hydrogen in and out back and down and together and apart again and again and again…
I like walking for miles when the tide is out, along from Saundersfoot to Amroth. There is no map to follow. Simply keep the land on your left and when you are ready to turn around, swap it to your right. Keep an eye out for jelly fish to gaze at. The soft translucence of these water world creatures landing in the open air. This meeting place of ocean and land is a place of constant discovery.
- The end.
With the low temperatures and crunchy frosts this last week, the battery in my little van gave up the ghost. I have known since the long weeks of lockdown that without some company and a good run she gets a bit grumpy.
After a kind jumpstart from a local friend I needed to take her out for a run and we headed to Clevedon. Initially. I was planning to take a pile of admin with me, and then the morning pages spoke: An artist’s date! An hour in a coffee shop. It had been a while since I had had a little solo adventure to the coast, so we set off. This 20 minutes of writing, and some toast and jam, got me remembering the work of Keri Smith and her How To Be An Explorer Of The World. I encountered Keri’s work in 2009 when landing in Bristol for the first time. Following her invitations to notice and get curious in the new, urban place I found myself. “Choose a colour. Go for a walk. Write a list of all of the things you find that are that colour.” - So utterly simple. Positively infantile. And so, so good.
Noticing the details. Asking questions. Getting curious about what we find. This is a fertile space for creating.
With the faint minty greens of the misty pier, and the percolating copper pipe blue chloride/acetate/sulphate in the studio, I then found myself drawn to other minty greens about the place. The vibrancy of the hue that cut through the alligator breath of the grey day.
A moist walk and some noticing.
It really brightened my spirits.
Visual minty ice cream greens.
A mini winter break.
- Kathryn
NEWS:
This Sunday 29th January I will be back at The Tobacco Factory Market in Bristol. I will have a stash of ink work available on Winter Sale and some fresh ink bundles.
I am deep in workshop planning and preparing. From Make Ink At Home kits and online workshops, to Root + Write sessions, online and (fingers crossed) in person, a cluster of seasonal colour making days and a Spring and Autumn 3-day weekend at The Dove in Somerset, for longer immersive making retreats. It is bubbling and brewing and further information will be released over the coming weeks.
A GOOD THING:
You. You right there. You’re a blooming good thing.
Thank you Kathryn. I love your updates.
I walked on the beach at Sand Bay (near Weston) on Tuesday. What a treat!
Today I'm dyeing paper with Black Walnut, foraged from the Bishop's Palace garden in Wells.