flat earth

Sometimes it is not clear if I am floating on land or water. This country is so amazingly engineered. We knew for sure that we were on water because the land fell away below us. The dykes hold the water back and the ground is below sea level.


This landscape is what I love so much about this place. Totally flat, the horizon is broken by reeds and the sky holds the potential of cloud mountains. Water and earth blend, rich farmland emerges. 20 minutes north of the city and the space of sky dominates. The houses are infinitely smaller in scale and hug the ground, the environment is all water and sky. Being able to see beyond that house, this tree... to have distance and views, urban intimacy gives me cravings for those. 

Zuiderwoude church in the distance

watching spring

The earliest beginnings of spring: the snowdrops are growing straggly and I am watching for the tulips to start pushing their bunched fingers through the warming soil. The days hover between fine, feeding, spring rain and sun. It is planning time in the studio and I am arranging the first research trips for the next part of the North Atlantic project.

This year I am working in Basque Spain and Labrador drawing the remains of the whaling ports left by the Basque in Labrador. They date mostly from the period of 1550-1610 when the Basque industry was at its zenith in this region. I am going first to Northern Spain to see where this began and to visit the forests where the wood for the ships came from.

This project encompasses an understanding of the history of both places to more fully comprehend the present day. It asks more questions than I can fully answer for now: what makes the people of the edges so passionate about our shared Atlantic Ocean, what is the sociological make-up of places like northern-most Spain (both then and now) and as a result what makes these places as they are and how do we all connect? I am in wonder that the small wooden boats used even managed to survive the journey. 

Most of all this is a chance for me to see these rocks for myself. To see huge coastal landscapes under the influences of chaining weather and erosion and to study the rock structures.  To make this possible I am behind the computer writing before venturing out to explore huge skies and rain dreaming.