Whilst lying on the deck of the Antigua I let the water rock me. I gave up control. Yet I realised after a while that I was still gently counterbalancing. I tried to give up that too. I thought about the navigators in the days of old who could sense the motion of the water and 'see' what was coming by lying on the deck with their eyes closed. Their eyesight was a distraction. Sometimes we see better with our eyes closed. I let the water take me to places which I hadn't known about myself.
Nothing felt stable on the boat and it seemed a natural way of being, life is constantly changing and only uncertainty is certain.
Isn’t this gentle rocking a way of being closer to nature, a womb like state. Why is the ground where I live so hard and stepping on it doesn’t bring back memories? We all come from the sea. But have we forgotten? Maybe if the ground was delicately moving we would remember more clearly that we are just passers by on this planet.
The series “At The Edge” was created on the Antigua during my Arctic Circle Residency in June 2023. It consists of 9 works (5 x 7 inch). In the act of assisting water in painting an image, rather than exerting total control, I spread the glacier water with a few drops of watercolour on the paper and I allowed the materials to react organically. The boat, rocked by the waves, was moving the water whilst the paint and water dried. Looking at this process was hypnotizing. The works were balancing at the edge of destruction as any bigger movement of the boat would cause the water to flow off the paper and destroy them.
"At The Edge"
5 x 7 inch
sailing from Gåshamna to Van Muydenbukta
Summer Solstice 21-22.06.2023