Prismatic Effects - Our field of vision

I've been thinking again about the difference between human vision and that of birds/insects. Our visible spectrum comprises the rainbow colours as shown here. These photos were taken of a very small holographic diffraction grating film - when it is placed in direct sunlight the white light is split into its constituent parts. Birds are tetrachromats and so can see ultraviolet in addition to these colours. Snakes see infrared. If we could only see what the animals see these images would appear very different.

This light installation is by Peter Erskine - he achieved this amazing prismatic light effect by using heliostats and prismatic film. I've been thinking that I could use a prismatic film to coat the windows on one of the hides - the rainbow display is only visible in the shadows of the interior - all that is needed is sunlight! The heliostat is used to track the sun - I'd have to make do without that.

Refurbishing a Bird Hide

College Lake, Tring

I'm in the planning stages of a project to refurbish a bird hide to include artwork relevant to the Wildlife Sanctuary at College Lake.

Listening to bird song led to thinking about how birds see, and how their vision differs from ours. We have 3 cones in the retina: red, green and blue, which allow us to distinguish one million different colours. Most birds have 4 cones: red, green, blue plus ultraviolet, which means they can distinguish 100 million different colours - these birds are tetrachromats. Pigeons are believed to be petrachromats, they see an even greater range of colour.

Bees can also see the shorter light waves in the near ultraviolet spectrum, but they cannot see red, at the other end of our band of visible light. So to bees the colour red appears black, whilst they are very attracted to blue/purples.

What does this mean? It's hard for us to imagine exactly what birds and insects see, because our imagination is limited by our experience. Colour is not an absolute - it varies depending upon who is observing it. The impression of colour is given by our brain's reaction to the different length light waves. So we can never truly know what others see. Taking photographs with a UV sensitive camera results in images that are coloured by the filters that the photographer chooses to use.

What is clear is that birds and insects see different patterns of colour in ordinary objects, eg flowers, that are hidden to us, and they see these in addition to the colours we perceive.

Here are some images of flowers and bird plummage that give an interpretation of uv markings...

So the artwork that I am thinking of making for the Bird Hide is along the lines of.... what might the birds, bees, butterflies and dragonflies at College Lake see?

The details of this are hazy as yet, but I'm working on it....

Bucks Open Studios

It's half way through the annual Open Studios in Bucks - here are a few photos of my studio at Commercial Square...

It's never been tidier!!!

We are open 11 to 5pm on 17, 18, 19 ,20, 26 and 27 June - the address is:

Commercial Square Studios

Block C

Leigh Court

Leigh Street

High Wycombe

HP11 2RH

Photographic Slides from the 1920s and 30s

Oak in graphite and alumium foil and powder (above)

Corsican Pine, reproduced from photographic slide (left)

I've had some fabulous glass photographic slides for a while now, wondering just what to do with them. They are beautiful in their own right but have been difficult to use, in that they do not photocopy, scan or project. Of course I could use them to print photographs from in a traditional dark room, but I wanted more from them.

So I've used 48 of them to create a light box installation that is 3 metres wide and 9 cms high. I love it.

Then I've used the images, which are all negatives, to draw from. It's very different drawing these from drawing the actual trees - you notice different things about the form and space and the light is transformed. As always I am using reflective materials in some of the work - graphite, aluminium and gold foils - plus inks and anything else that occurs to me.

I photographed the slides on a makeshift light table which resulted in some fascinating images - not evenly lit, but rather enhanced by the concentration of the light source. My digital camera has settings for monochrome etc and some I photographed in black and white, and some in glowing colour, which shows as a range of sepia and gold tones. Now I can print them as they are - in amazing quality considering their provenance - and play around with them digitally.

Making music

When my father died I found all his sheet music, going back to the 1920s when he was a pupil of Miss Lee in Scholes, nr Holmfirth, learning the pianoforte, spanning the years when he played the piano accordion as a young man (it was the guitar of the time), and right up until his death at 85 when he played the organ.
I don't play any keyboard, but desperately wanted to do something with the music so I saved it until such time as I found the right way to use it in my artwork.
Recently I have been making 2D relief pieces where I take each bar of music and score along the lines of the staves, then fold the bar into something ressembling a matchstick.

I think they're rather beautiful, and the bars of the different pieces of music are vastly varied - slow music with long notes has short bars, fast music with demi semi quavers (?) has long bars.

Once I have made the series of matchstick bars, then I turn them vertically and place them on prepared boards - either smooth gesso or worked graphite - they are reminiscent of organ pipes.

The resulting artwork maintains a link with the original music, both physically and conceptually, despite the form being subverted by presenting vertical bars of music.

Some of These Days

closeup

Schubert's Piano Concerto in Bflat - provisonal layout

St Louis Blues

And a few oil sketches/paintings of Southern Ireland

Landscapes are something I don't often do, but a trip to Crookhaven last year made me want to reproduce some of the beauty of that place.

Colours of Peru

These are a few sketches from my trip to Peru - primarily I went to walk the Inka Trail with my daugther, but we also went to Lake Titikaka. Above all else I was impressed by the wonderful colours!