‘Turning to stone’ is a work in progress that draws inspiration from the short story ‘A Stone Woman’ by AS Byatt and ‘I dream of dead people’ by Rosalind Belben. To date the work has been shot on location in rural Cornwall and Scotland and I hope to travel to Iceland to honour the closing scenes of AS Byatt’s story.
In ‘A Stone Woman’; Ines, a woman without children who is grieving her mother, finds her body turning to stone. As she turns to granite she travels to Iceland, eventually joining a joyous stone tribe. She is helped by a stonecutter who witnesses her gradual transformation.
‘The stonecutter looked up at her, then down at his work, and made one or two intent little chips at it. Ines felt the sharp blows in her own body.’
‘She stripped off shirt and jogging pants, trainers and vest, her mother’s silken knickers….She croaked, “Have you ever seen such a thing?”
On residency at Cove Park in Scotland this year, I was drawn to ‘erratics’ on the plateaus – huge stones deposited by ancient glacial waters. I read Nan Shephard on her beloved Caingorms as I wrote about the hills, creating characters from the walkers I met and the stones I leant against and photographed. These characters gave me advice and taught me about the landscape.
In ‘I dream of dead people’ the protagonist Lavinia gives voice poetically and pragmatically to the sharp pain of longing for children. This will give form to my own and others narratives around the complexities of becoming mothers, or not and of coming into our selves, playing characters and creating portraits and self-portraits in wild landscapes.
‘I have to go further, and further, to be alone. But one summer, I went far enough. To Scotland. Beyond my known northern boundary.’
‘The blue tit peers into my room, with daring, to see if she can rest with me. She can’t.’
I felt connection with Belben’s writing though her character’s association with Scotland and encounter with a bird, which reminded me of an image from my earlier work – the book ‘Endless Reproduction’ which features birds outside my window; a goldfinch tilting its head as it peers into my bedroom.
The work is forming through writing, 16mm filming and photographing on digital and medium format film. It suggests a book, a narrative, loosely formed from the images playing in my mind and working with others.
With grateful thanks to Cove Park and Creative Kernow Associates, David Paton, Margaret Salmon, Tony Grisoni, Neal Megaw, Tiffany Paul and the Hypatia Trust for introducing me to ‘A Stone Woman’.