‘It is no longer an inalienable truth that we must honour this flying stone home of ours. The gifts of stone’s relative solidity and knuckle-grazing vitality are easily blasted asunder overlooked, ignored.’
Professor Amanda Ravetz
I’ve become interested in how the drawing of rocks and stones transforms them into more auspicious objects. I’ve collected stones all of my life. Some have been lost or discarded but some have remained. As objects they vary in their qualities: some are fossils and so have a direct function of revealing ancient life-forms, some are mysteries - they are ‘maybe fossils ’or contain signs that they have been worked to make them useful - like flint arrow heads or scrapers. But the majority of them are just stones that happen to have caught my attention because of their shape, texture, colour etc.
Stones are as old as anything we know about - they are fragments of the (mother) earth and before that their substance is of the stars. On maps they may be described as ‘a pile of stones ’or a ‘cairn ’or ‘boulder erratics ’and they have potentially huge significance not least as geographical and ceremonial locators. They (to me) contain energy and power - I’ve thought this since childhood.
Something else happens when they are kept and curated over many years. They are reminders of their moment and location of discovery, including who was there and what feelings were associated with them at the time. A number of them are gifts - and for this reason they are reminders of the giver and the sentiment at the time of their being gifted.
I curate my stones into clusters and groups although a few are stand-alones. They are in most parts of the home - sitting room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. I often stare at them and handle them and marvel at the cosmic history packed tightly inside them.
I started drawing and painting stones when I was a kid. They are good sitters. They have great alternative aspects and viewing points. They are a test of drawing - ideas about scale, weight, density, shape and texture are challenging to depict. Making drawings of them has the effect of making them seem more special or auspicious perhaps. Sometimes I have had stone drawing sessions with members of my family and other artists. I keep their drawings in a box cupboard and occasionally hang them in the house - some framed, mostly not.
In more recent drawings they have begun to behave in gravity-defying ways. They float and move - and I’m not exactly sure I understand why. It has emerged from a repeated process of drawing them. I think the mystery of their behaviour is important - perhaps because they are a question for the viewer - are they falling, floating or rising? I see them as a symbol of the link between these different attitudes and also of the notion that there are multiple possible realities or realms in the same space at the same time.