Our house was almost at the top of Bowland Fell, but not quite. There was one more rise. I could leave our back door with my art stuff strapped to my back and push up over the final climb. It was a steep climb, but worth the effort; at the top I looked down onto the roof of our house, and further down onto Duerdale. It was an impressive view of tight streets, low houses and dark mills. The blackness of the buildings settled like a scar on the floor of the valley. To the left of the town stood the local cement factory, grey quarries, like giant moon craters spreading out behind two tall chimneys.
The rocks were in a pile at the very top of the fell, marking the summit. It was the colours that first attracted me. I didn’t realise how many different colours you could have in stone. There were shades of brown, green, grey, black, even faint reds and blues if you looked carefully enough. They felt as different as they looked. Some stones were as smooth and round as marbles and had soft patches of moss you could use as a pillow. Others were coarse and pitted with edges that could rip your skin. There was a lot of different texture. ‘Texture is vital’ – the wisdom of my dad. He could tell a type of wood purely by feel. He told me it was important to think about the material I was painting. To consider how the object felt to touch and to try and convey that onto the paper. He said I should use all my senses to paint, not just sight. I was learning what he meant and painting the rocks and stones was good practice. I set up each afternoon at around the same time, but always in a different place. A pile of rocks and stones sounds static, I know, but these really weren’t. The light changed hour by hour and the stones changed colour. Shadows came and went and the stones seemed to shrink and grow.
I paint quickly. I started and finished a painting in an afternoon. The finished paintings were lined up against a wall in my bedroom. My dad didn’t normally go in my bedroom but I caught him looking at them. There were three so far. He stood for a long time. Considering. He told me they were good. He meant it. My mum said all my paintings were brilliant and she meant it too, but Dad could tell the really good ones. I’d decided to paint one each day for as long as I stayed interested. It kept me busy. It kept me blank.