This is the project  run by Dorset Visual Arts that I mentioned in a previous blog. It brings together artists working in all sorts of media  and encourages us to work together if we wish and in any case learn from each other when we meet. It is proving very fruitful in all sorts of ways.  It has encouraged me to broaden the way I look at the landscape. Just the use of the word interrogate has opened up some interesting possibilities.

I have also met some interesting people. Yesterday I went for another walk with Jen the artist I met at the project. This time we went to Coney’s Castle one of the Iron Age Hill forts in West Dorset. This is my favourite so far- a relatively small site on a ridge.  It feels quite intimate to me , I can imagine people living there. though Jen wondered where they would have found their water! I go there often to catch it at different seasons. I am doing a series of pieces evoking the view of hedgerows and fields that you see from the defensive wall overlooking the Marshwood Vale. Yesterday Jen and I sat in the bright sunshine overlooking the valley and sketched.  This is what I wrote ‘ bright sunlight, singing birds, hills seen through haze, gorse in glorious bloom, heat rising from the valley.’ You can see the gorse in the image above. Lots of ideas for a new series of pieces.