Jen,
I read your email quickly this afternoon and then went on a two hour walk up into the hills to digest it. It was perfect: ice sheets became window panes while your email was bounding about in my head. And when I got to the top, a heavy blanket of mist covered the valley, engulfing Lake Geneva so that only the Alps above the cloud-line, on the far side of the valley, were still visible, like things had been turned upside down.
When I last came to your studio, I was so struck by those pictures you made in the dimensions of train carriage windows; the dark void of a window at night. I know you’ve been stuck on windows recently, so perhaps it's not surprising that this ‘vinyl image of Portree, fractured across six panes, with light shining through and animating the ocean's ripples’ revealed itself to you.
Did I mention, I am staying in this glass cabin that is shrouded in white metal mesh, which means the windows lose their purpose, if the purpose is visibility (as in daylight or a view). At first I felt irked by the veil and how it obscured the vista, merging into the white of the mountain’s snowy clefts. But what if the surface of the window takes up subject position?
For the panels you’re making, the gradient functions more as a visual device than a pictorial composition, which is exactly what my camera is doing with the mountains. You said that one of your favourite gradients is ‘the blue fade in the windscreen of old cars that makes the road ahead look like Hollywood.’
When I think of the blue of the windscreen, I think of seeing something through rose-tinted glasses. What was it you said? ‘A gradient over Glasgow when the light dims and the corporate J.P. Morgan logo lights up, and how if it's a clear evening there's always a lovely fade from light to dark. Something commodified and buyable. Something romantic. A kiss as the sun sets.’ I love this.
Much love and sunsets and roses xx
Rosie
P.S.
Also, I'm sitting at the glass table in the glass cabin, which is in the shape of a basic flower, like a modernist daisy or cartoon flower, but because of the undulating edges, my elbow slips into the gaps and off the table when I type. XX
