Deep Waters and Powerful Swells

Deep Waters and Powerful Swells

You can always rely on a bit of wind in Fair Isle

Outside the studio window, the waves build into huge swells and then rise up until they curl and fall into a round tunnel of smooth glassy water. Greens, blues, deep aquas, pale aqua, white on grey stone. As I weave, these colours find their way onto the loom and I embroider the flow of the current into the cloth that emerges.

The view from the studio window has been dramatic. The waves roll in huge breakers curling up to the pebble shore and crashing into a spume of white before spilling themselves into a large grey pool. The weather comes in moods. Sometimes this shallow pool in the cove is calm and glittering in the sunshine, at other times wild and lost in a huge spray of white. 

The ever changing view from the studio window

Woven Shawl: Shaltsteen

Woven and Embroidered 100% Shetland Wool; 68" x 26"

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As I watch the waves wash into shallows I find myself thinking and wondering about the stiller, deeper waters that power them, the solid depths whose weight and movement slowly and inexorably pushes the water into these waves and curls. They come from the deeper waters. the deep marine blues, ultramarine, cobalt, Payne's grey, brooding and still beneath, slowly diluting into pale aquas as they reach the shallower waters.

The island is surrounded by deep waters, some of the most treacherous in the U.K lie around Fair Isle and the sea bed is littered with shipwrecks. I imagine these wrecks, lying on the sand and stone, the drama of their loss quietened by the depths, by time passing and consider the treasures that could lie with them. These imagined treasures echo some of the real treasures that wash up on the shore, softened and rounded pieces of ceramic, sea glass and the myriad remains of strange creatures that we find among the rocks when out beach combing.

Egg Case (Chondrichthyes) or Mermaid's Purse

The weird root of a Sea Kelp
(Laminaria Hyperborea is native to Fair Isle)

From the depths of the deep ocean, the surface may thrash wildly in the wind and swells, but deeper in that dark blue depth there is a stillness that moves gently with each swell. 

Down in the depths you could hang still, even look up into the crashing surface and glint of daylight, but you could be still and calm and held by the sea. 

Woven Shawl: West Soond
Woven and Embroidered 100% Shetland Wool

SOLD