William Farmer
BA (Hons) Fine Art
Something isn’t making sense.
Why can’t I sleep?
Why do my friends feel so distant?
Why is that man staring at me?
Why am I scowling back at him?
Eh?
The yearning to understand and to be understood, to be connected to someone or something; to belong…
all just feels too much.
So, look to the natural, the biological, the ancient and the picturesque and find … it’s not what you remember.
Why does this soil feel hollow?
When did it all start feeling so bleak?
The moors were once an endless carpet of waist high jungle, dotted with monolithic stone altars, waymarking your journey.
Was it something you read or something they said? The ‘growing up’ of it all?
Simon Schama wrote –
“landscape is a work of the mind. … Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.”
As we plumet towards our collective point of no return, can we understand how we got here? The echoes of greed and violence are ringing our doorbells, closer to home than we would ever admit. The field, bordered with barbs, contains the flock, pleasant and polite, ubiquitous gardeners, employed to maintain this green and pleasant land,
picture postcard poster placemat parliamentary peace-talks precarious pruning.
Until the farmer’s labour no longer holds the same value and a quarry is more productive. Then dig and dig and dig and find …
there’s not much left.
This is where we start. We work to understand and to be understood. We pick up the pieces and open ourselves up to one another. We work to address what went wrong, to recognise our fragility and to embrace our vulnerabilities.
To make something make sense.
