I've been doing a lot of thinking about where this project is actually headed, but in the meantime thought I would share these details of the area with you. They were sketches of details in the landscape taken on an earlier visit to Levant Mine which is immediately next door to Geevor. Partly these will figure in a landscape painting I am working on, but I am still considering which elements will be added to the final version.
Thinking is as far as I get while at work (the rigorous rules in a food-production environment make using a sketchbook while on duty (under a surveillance camera) a one-way ticket to not having a job! However, thinking is free (at the moment) so I have had plenty of opportunity to consider where this mining project is going.
It is evident that the people - the miners - are going to play a major role in it, and as I originally envisaged this as a visual arts project I am still not sure whether I want this to expand into personal histories or how to contain personal memories within my own discovered images. I also find myself wanting to branch out into poetry or prose to define an impression in words instead of images, but I am wary as this path can lead to arabesques of self-important wordcraft and lose the original intention. And my intention is, at present, still nebulous but based on producing imagery to explore the historical Cornish mining environment, and to ultimately link it to its co-existent partnership with Welsh coal-mining and ore processing.
Both industries have died in my lifetime, but have been re-kindled through tourism, and that is how I have discovered both. I am the voyeur looking in with little comprehension, and I need to scratch deeper to get at the meaning.
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