Blue Hill (sorrow mountain)
images of an autumn day. A bright, mountain morning in North Wales. Blue hills and vivid pastures sprinkled with sheep.
I was driving through Snowdonia National Park in North Wales on a bright, sunny autumn day in October. The sharp light and strong shadows created an intense contrast of colours between the steep slopes and rocky grass meadows sprinkled with warm sheep. I took a few, quick photographs, but they didn't replicate the vivid coloration very well. This selection is of various cropped images with saturation and colour modified to approximate the actual, startling, optical experience.As the image quality isn't great, I am attempting to turn some of these into paintings....
the following poem also emrged from out of this. 'sorrow mountain' is both a play on 'blue', and a reminder that upland life is a harsh thing...
sorrow mountain
its dark weight
rain wet,
peopled with sunlight.
where purple cliff relents:
green heaped meadows,
hawthorn and sheep.
such light is distant
a rolling soil
held down by boulders
endless are the empty paths
upon its heaped up head.
pressed and rich as butter
the pastures bedded.
the silent road
a blink in daylight
lost around dusted corners.
we move on
silently from above
where the sky's eye
waters a tragic blue.
