The phenomenology of belonging
There’s no place like home, Toto, but what makes a place feel like home? When I arrived in Australia some 20 years ago I immediately felt at home in the landscape, and yet it’s a far cry from where I grew up in Scotland. I still think of Scotland as home too, so I’m beginning to explore ways to reconcile the two places.
To that end I spent February hiking, camping and making art in the Scottish Highlands as a way of interrogating the notion of “belonging”.
After a 20 year absence I found that I could still read the land in a way that I’m only learning to do in Australia. For example, when crossing Rannoch Moor, I became aware of how I instinctively knew where to put my feet in order to avoid sinking knee deep in peat bog.
Other distant memories returned too. Language I hadn’t used for years started to pop into my head: smirr, a fine rain; grue, the lacy ice at the edge of a winter burn; burn, a stream… and so on.
All of this taking place in low winter light. Even at midday, the sun, on the rare occasions it appeared, stayed low in the sky, casting long blue shadows across the snow.
Belonging embodied in movement and navigation. Belonging embodied in language.
I felt a strong sense of homecoming out in the wind and snow. A sense that I was inhabiting the land that had given birth to me. This sense even survived the barman at a pub saying to me “we don’t get many Aussies here in the winter”. I love a bit of bathos, me.
So I hiked and I drew and I camped and I drew some more. At temperatures that hovered around and below freezing this had the makings of a new straight-to-cable show: Extreme Plein-air Artists. Copyrighting the format now.
This reminds me to thank Mont Adventure Equipment in Australia for their advice and support (and super warm sleeping bag) when I was putting this project together and Nortent in Norway for the seemingly indestructible tent.
The outdoor bit is finished and I’m sitting sorting through sketches and memories and working out how to make art that reflects my experiences.
art about place 