...a product of civilisation and a socially constructed idea.
(Barry, J. Environment and Social Theory, 1999)

...it was not that wilderness had changed but that it was viewed in a new context in which the 'natural' and aesthetic became coveted qualities.
(Nash, R. F. Wilderness and the American Mind, 2001)

The Edenic Recovery Story: 'Original Eve' in which nature is virginal, pure, light and pristine. Although the land is barren, it has the potential for development; 'Fallen Eve' is seen as the disorderly and chaotic nature, where the wilderness is a wasteland and desert requiring improvement; 'Mother Eve' portrays nature as an improved garden which provides nurturance for the earth and bears fruit.
(Warner, A. The Construction of Wilderness: An historical perspective, 2008)

...wise explorers plotted out their journeys on maps of the familiar.
...your sense of self is enhanced because of its extended capacity for sight…
No vocabulary exists to describe what he experienced.
…qualities of a landscape which Romanticism had made so appealing.
For explorers names gave meaning and structure to a landscape
Through the unknown we will find the new.
(MacFarlane, R. Mountains of the Mind, 2003)

Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it hold up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we se the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires
... I celebrate with others who love wilderness the beauty and power of the things it contains. Each of us who has spent time there can conjure images and sensations that seem all the more hauntingly real for having engraved themselves so indelibly on our memories. Such memories may be uniquely our own, but they are also familiar enough to be instantly recognizable to others
... remember the feeling of such moments and you will know as well as I do that you were in the presence of something irreducibly nonhuman, sometyhing profoundly other than yourself; Wilderness is made of that too
... And yet: what brought each of us to the places where such memories became possible is entirely a cultural invention.
(Cronon, W. The trouble with wilderness: Or getting back to the wrong nature, 1995)

…usually no-one notices you’ve been gone… (Baudrilard, J. America, 1989)

Without the necessity of encountering difficulty, life might be easier, but men would be worth less. (Smiles, S. Self Help, 1859) 		I do not distinguish between the inner and outer landscapes, between the environment at the physical world out there (the hard stuff) and the mental images of the environment within each individual (the soft stuff). It is the tension, the transition, the exchange and the resonance between these two modalities that energise and define reality.
(Bill Viola)

The twelve technical rules for how to achieve the twelve things to avoid:

1. No texture
2. No brushwork or calligraphy
3. No sketching or drawing
4. No forms
5. No design
6. No colours
7. No light
8. No space
9. No time
10. No size or scale
11. No movement
12. No object, no subject, no matter. No symbols images or signs.

(Ad Rheinhardt) 		Scottish Sculpture Workshop: Emerging Artist Residency
September/October 2011

Write to me here:
1 Main Street
Lumsden
AB54 4JN

All correspondence cheerfully received.