Three Flying Ducks by Kirsten Harris, Ink and acrylic on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm
I’ve started to panic about the upcoming exhibition. Panic is such a waste of energy, so yesterday I tried to harness the energy by painting fast with feathers and let the wild mental energy play. As I painted, responding to the land I can see from the studio window, an idea came in the form of a word – re-wilding.
The field behind my house is semi re-wilding, due to the fact that a small stream is blocked as it flows under the road for a while. The back flow is flooding the field.
‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change!’ Wayne Dyer
Part horrified by the loss of a fabulous grazing field which is now cut in half by water, it is also exciting to see the re-wilding that is taking place. Ducks and herons, frog spawn and bull rushes, badger and deer coming to drink and less excitingly midges in the summer, but they bring the swallows soaring over the wet land.
My friend coined the emerging lake ‘Loch Earston’!
It was the inspiration for paintings last summer and I am going to carry on letting it inspire and observe the continued re-wilding through paint.
I love it when an idea is brought in on the wind of a busy mind. Almost as though the panic is caused by an idea trying to push through!
I hope to see you at the exhibition in Edinburgh in May if you can make it.
Kirsten x
