So Far

The new challenge - all 170 of us or at least all the First Years have to work collaboratively on resourcing, curating, promoting, documenting and producing a SHOW!  The brief for this exhibition is the story so far ... It is about showing the tutors what we believe our specialist area of study to be .. so I need to paint! It is also communicate my experience, relections and thoughts during the last five weeks at eca. 

I have decided to focus my piece on Advocate's Close in Edinburgh.  I walk up it daily on arriving at Waverly Station.  I climb up all of 119 steps or so to the Royal Mile.  Each time I get a little thrill. Edinburgh is a very beautiful city and this part of it is steeped in history.  Walking up the Close you get the feel of how over hundreds of years, various people/buildings and business ventures have come and gone.  There are doorways that lead to nowhere, dates on top of lintels, old walls in front of more modern walls.  Halfway up there is a sign on a lintel which reads ' He that tholes overcomes'.  Timely advice when drawing breath and feeling wobbly legs.

To me the climb is also metaphorical.  Going back to a teaching analogy - the ladder.  If life's achievements can be likened to a series of rungs on a ladder, eca represents the pinnacle of achievement, the highest rung in a ladder. Along the way are other very important dates, such as those of the birth of my children.  I have notions of creating a painting of the Close, making much of the overlapping nature of the steps and inserting my important dates over lintels of doors and windows.