 It was after 11 p.m. when I arrived at Morfa Mawddach Station. The last hour of that seventeen-hour train journey, I sat with my eyes pressed close to the window, trying to look into the passing black. I saw only the waxing moon, moving slowly in and out of view, hanging low above an invisible sea. The next morning was like unwrapping a gift, only the gift was a vast, expansive landscape, with wind and sun and clouds rolling over distant hills. The next two weeks went by in a blur. I walked across the hills, felt rain and wind and cold, and ran down slippery slopes, afraid of an approaching storm. I made stacks and stacks of drawings, trying to find a way in. It wasn’t until the last few days, when I went up the hill, that I felt a sense of calm.
Here were trees dancing in a slow choreography formed by a hundred years of salt and wind. I sat myself down on the moss with big sheets of paper, and looked. I'd come down for lunch, and go up again in the afternoon, spending days drawing the same trees. While I feel most at home in my practice when it is less about observation and more about memory, I found it helpful to make these sustained drawings of the dancing trees. They taught me that drawing is a form of attention: by unhurrying myself and spending time in the landscape, I heard crows, felt the wind, and noticed the flies on whose home I was sitting. I’ve found that these memories of journey and place will often move into drawings of their own; drawings about how wet my feet were, or the family of crows above me. The residency helped me understand that I seem to want to describe the breadth of the landscape and my memory of it, and that making longer drawings is a helpful part of that process. I left with a stack of drawings, a full heart, and a long list of haphazard memories that I’m sure will find their way to paper some day. Thank you Mawddach, Jake, Scarlett, soft moths, curly oaks, and much loved Toby. Maria Fraaije website
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