The Look Outside Project 2020, exhibited 2022.
The Look Outside Project installation
In the earliest days of the Covid 19 Lockdown period in March 2020 I put out a call on social media for short, written descriptions of sights, sounds and impressions of the world beyond our windows in a time of restricted freedom of movement. I collected more than two hundred short phrases from across the world. The collection was made into three panels, resembling windows, hanging together at eye level. As the visitor looks at the panels, the installation becomes performance and the visitor becomes an essential part of the piece, seeming to look through the windows to observe the natural world outside.
Some of the phrases collected in 2020 gave their titles to paintings and these and the Look Outside Project windows were shown at The WILDERNESS BEWILDERNESS solo exhibition, North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford in May 2022.
“A woodland blackbird sends an afternoon song”
acrylic, ink and oil on canvas SOLD
This painting is an example of work influenced by a collection of phrases from The Look Outside Project.
“An eye-stripping east wind”
(title taken from The Look Outside Project collection)
graphite washed with watercolour on paper
This drawing recalls the confusion, the chill and the loneliness of the first days of Lockdown 2020. The white poplars on Wolvercote Lakes were just coming into leaf - it seemed unwillingly. The crows were defending their right to nest in them and seeing off the raven. Meanwhile the bird song at dawn and at dusk was increasing in volume.
“sleeping hawthorn”
(from The Look Outside Project collection)
ink and pencil on paper
The hawthorn was probably only twice my height when we first came to live here. An undervalued scrubland tree to be felled in an instant, with no compunction. In fact a hawthorn hosts 149 species of insect. This brings it into fourth place behind the oak, willow and birch (silver and downy). Ours is now a splendidly tall tree, acting as a food station, nest site and staging post for many species of bird.
“Nothing prepares us for the shock of the blossom”.
(from The Look Outside Project Collection)
ink, pencil and acrylic on paper
“The hawthorn, fresh-leaved, generous host, breathes deep, at tree speed. Nothing prepares us for the shock of the blossom.”
“Skylark rising in song above a sunlit meadow” SOLD
(from The Look Outside Project collection)
acrylic and ink on canvas
“Skylarks soaring above the meadow - Lark Ascending in my head”.
“A charm of goldfinches and a great tit shouting from the hawthorn”.
from The Look Outside Project collection, oil on canvas.
“Our clay garden opens its mouth to the soaking rain.” SOLD
from The Look Outside Project collection
oil on wooden board