Work published in Stravaig, journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics
- aphillipsarts
- Jun 16
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 19
This year the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics celebrates its 30th anniversary with this edition of Stravaig. I am delighted to have two recent works published in the new edition of their journal Stravaig. There they find themselves in the very good company of artwork, poetry, and essays from members of the Geopoetics community.
I joined the organisation following the 2017 conference held on Seil, an island off the west coast of Scotland which is separated from the mainland by a distance of a few meters. This ancient blog post reflects upon my experience there, and introduces the themes and topics covered by a number of those presenting and providing workshops.
You can find out more about this brilliant organisation by visiting their website, and Stravaig can be accessed from the 'journal' section of the main menu: https://www.geopoetics.org.uk/
In the making of these images pastel is applied by first crumbling it onto the paper in small amounts, and then smoothing it across the surface by hand. The mountain area formed of ink is made using a dip pen with fine nib, and the fine marks in the graphite section utilise a technical pencil.
Both are available to purchase directly from me. The images are linked to the webstore, and you are also welcome to email me with any questions or enquiries.
And This Heavy Silence
Ink, pastel, graphite, on paper
Paper size: 76 x 56 cm
Image size: 73.5 x 50 cm
2024
I can distinctly remember standing by the water at Ellenabeich, and looking across the sea towards the looming mountains on Mull. This kind of coastline is often in my mind, and the particular feelings that they evoke, which is part personal and part the voice of the place speaking through that language.
"That Nature has devised a way to offer these signs and open these channels should be no surprise, for it has also fine-tuned the equipment required to perceive them."
P.Prudence - Figured Stones, Exploring the lithic imaginary
A poem by Kenneth White, founder of Geopoetics.
In The Atlantic Zone
On Mull along the Allt na Teanngaidh
among sandstone and schist
on Gunna
with a hundred barnacle Geese
ranging along the coast
on Colonsay
lying on a raised beach in the rain
looking out over
a stretch of windswept dune
on Jura
in a cabin near the Paps
gazing on a lump of rosy quartz
on Islay
walking the salty machair
that the tide has left
watching out there in the grey
the wan waters of the North Atlantic Drift.
— From OPENWORLD, The Collected Poems 1960 - 2000
We Drew Sleep From Stones
Pastel, iron gall ink, acrylic ink, graphite, on paper
Paper size: 47 x 27 cm
Image size: 43 x 23 cm
2024
I have always felt very in tune with this organisation and its fairly unique multidisciplinary ethos, which it develops whilst retaining its independence. Very much open to the cultivation of new ideas and the re-visioning of old ones, but also reassuringly disinterested in following trends.
Geopoetics is deeply critical of Western thinking and practice over the last 2500 years and its separation of human beings from the rest of the natural world, and proposes instead that the universe is a potentially integral whole, and that the various domains into which knowledge has been separated can be unified by a poetics which places the planet Earth at the centre of experience.
It seeks a new or renewed sense of world, a sense of space, light and energy which is experienced both intellectually, by developing our knowledge, and sensitively, using all our senses to become attuned to the world, and requires both serious study and a certain amount of de-conditioning of ourselves by working on the body-mind.
Andrew Phillips is a Visual Artist, Art Psychotherapist, Creative Mentor / Life Coach, in south Wales.
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