In this episode, I talk about my new studio and how working in isolation affects our sense of time. I consider ideas of time and how as painters we have to think about space and time in ways that many might not. I touch on Hockney, but of course one cannot forget the Cubists and early Scandinavian painters who also played with space-time. I am no expert and am merely skirting around a subject that has only just begun to grab my attention as I delve further into blue and what it means in terms of metaphysical longing. I feel another trip to the library coming on!

I then bring you the sounds of Zurich, St. Gallen and the Swiss Alps where I travelled to this summer in my search for wild Gentians. The climb through the mountains was pretty tough as I was recovering from an illness, but it was utterly amazing. The beauty of the Swiss Alps is unrivaled and whilst being in this sublime environment I felt I was able to connect with true 'Strum und Drang' and the kindred souls who first begun the European Romantic Movement, such as Novalis and Goethe. Sturm und Drang, (German: “Storm and Stress”), was a proto-Romantic movement which appeared in German literature in the late 18th Century. It exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism. Towards the end of the 18th Century this morphed into the more commonly known 'Romantic Movement', which continued to emphasize intense emotions as an authentic source of aesthetic experience. Especially those that could be experienced when confronting the sublimity, spontaneity, and beauty found in nature.

After Switzerland, I moved studio in Andalucia before travelling on to Dublin, Ireland to see painter Elaine Moore Mackey. The soundscape, therefore, takes you from Switzerland to Spain and then on to Dublin and then finally to Kildare where I am joined with botanical painter Shevaun Doherty in our search for Blue Irish Linen and Romantic ruined castles. 

As always, I have mashed up and blended the sounds of places so you don't really know where you are. You are just somewhere in time and place.

IMAGE: Prototype work for Blue Flower: Gentian by Jessica R. Shepherd. Oil on canvas.