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St. Mary's Abbey, York at sunset.
"For a long time now, he had considered the hand one of the marvels of the human form, as individual and expressive as a face. Its twenty-seven bones were not only a feat of engineering, but, once fleshed, were in articulation sublime, the individual communication those bones capable of attested to by the fact that no two handshakes were the same. In Faha, the hands of men and women had their world in them. They were hands swollen, sore, scarred, hands formed by weather and work, hands crooked, curved, with the one finger that couldn’t be straightened or the one that couldn’t be bent, the finger that was part-tobacco, the one with the thorn embedded or nail turned amber, purple or black, from a puck or a blow unrecalled but memorialised, hands with fingers clubbed, contracted, with joints that cracked loud like sundered timber, yellow knobs for knuckles, hands that wore assorted lumps and ganglia, ones with skin roughened, toughened, from contact with earth and animals, from the rubbing scrubbing and scouring that all the world needed, hands that wore history and geography, which was nothing more or less than the signature of place and your time in it."
Niall Williams, Time of the Child.
She keeps glancing back at my hands, but it barely registers as I take in the warmth of the cafe and the bonhomie of pastries huddled atop the counter.
I order an oat latte and a Danish from the barista - and she says, “Sure!” with a smile. Then her smile diminishes as she looks down again towards my hands. “Are you ok?” she says. Everybody in the cafe stops and looks at me.
My hands look as though they’ve been in a bare-fisted boxing match - reds and purples and every hue in between.
I offer them up for the barista to see.
“Absolutely fine,” I say - “I’ve been tussling with Roman Szmal.”
I have sausage fingers - but there is evidence of years of photography on them - on the left side of my middle finger, there is a patch of hardened skin - which is the area that rubs along the front of my camera, as I posture for a shot.
More recently, as well as the knots and gnarls that fit around my camera, they’ve been subject to muddy hues of paint along the back of my hand and the odd touch of cadmium yellow, or phthalo blue under a fingernail.
During my travels for In Pursuit of Spring - whilst I painted every day, my hands became a chromatic register of the day's findings - as well as my camera, pen and sketchbook.
There's nothing more satisfying than the visceral embodiment of a journey through the creative act, and especially through sketching and painting the places and experiences around me.
Art as a medium of embodiment helps me see from different perspectives, observe the hidden beyond the surface, increase empathy and engagement with others, and aid the discovery of self within a wider world - and a wider world within the self. But there is more than just the visual surface that lies within an artist’s sketchbook.
An artist’s sketchbook is a way of communicating beyond words - and there are so many layers to it.
I chose the actual sketchbook because of its pocketable size and its unusual use of the concertina format.
The book is, of course, an accumulation of time, memory and identity. As you turn the pages - there is movement from north to south.
As you read through it you might be forgiven for asking a few questions.
Why is his work looser in some places and why is it tightened up in others? Was he subject to the vagaries of the weather? Or subject to an act of emotional joy?
Why did he choose the places he depicted? Are they related? Do they tell us of his moral compass, his beliefs and attitudes?
There seems to be a correspondence with another - the title tells all - with a man called Edward Thomas - he’s a kind of ghost within the paint and, at its loosest expression - at Crowcombe - he is felt the most.
This book that records layers is layered itself. Its form is a comfort and a reminder of the layers of history - unfold it like time, and there is a continuity.
And what, if like some of the objects I came across and painted on this journey, this book were lost and enfolded into the ground? And what if, by some miraculous turn, it were held in aspic and found 1000 years later?
They would look and they would see and interpret and share and then, perhaps, with their techniques and ways - like the isotope analysis of an ancient tooth - they would investigate the composition of the paint. After that, another story - a parallel story - would unfold, just like the book itself.
They would say that the sketchbook was made by Fabriano and that it was likely purchased at the renowned and historic art shop of Fred Aldous in Manchester.
They would say that the paint was from Roman Szmal (with a touch of Winsor and Newton). But, notably, at different times and on different pages - we can see more than the paint.
They found a hair from a squirrel brush.
They found traces of paint mixed from the shores of Loch an Eilein.
At Whitby there are traces of blood in the depiction of chorizo on the page (as well as coffee). From this they found that the artist was male.
Did he cut himself and offer his blood into the chorizo as a ritualistic act, they would say. (It was really a cut from the handrail on the sea of steps up to Whitby Abbey).
At Hough on Hill there are traces of wine in the south aisle, salt in the pinnacles and chip fat in the grotesques. Did the artist finish off the sketch in a pub at Greetham?
And at Newport - in the final micro-layer of the last wash - there is evidence that he ran out of water to mix his paints, couldn’t find another source, and so licked the brush into agency.
And on a depiction of some flora and fauna the undeniable sign of the artists fingerprint used to create a backdrop. There he is.
"A direct correlation to the cave paintings at Lascaux." They might say.
And the oddest of things - only now detectable with their most up to date techniques - the faint echo of another living thing: a bird - a robin on the artist’s painting of an olive tree - an olive tree which, through some careful detective work, still lives.
They found kombucha in that painting too, but at Crowcombe he used a particularly traceable type of water - a mineral water that identifies as a singular source. Did he use paint mixed with water from an organist’s water bottle placed in a plastic cup found on his desk? And then swab his brush on a donations envelope (which he glued into the sketchbook)?
And finally, they managed to find the faint traces of something through the paper of the donations envelope - a message the artist left inside, a message to the future - handwritten in ink on a card.
It is perhaps the clearest human trace of all - a vascular response to the times he was living in - an echo of a sentiment that may have helped him continue:
“In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was within me an invincible smile.”
(Attrib: Albert Camus)
But of course, even without the card inside the envelope, if we look carefully enough at the work itself, we can already see an invincible spring in the midst of winter.
In Pursuit of Spring - My Sketchbook For Sale.
I hope that this journey has brought you a little further into spring.
This journey was one of the first extensive projects that wasn't supported or brought about by my commissioned professional photography work. This was a journey brought about exclusively for the Genius Loci Digest, members and subscribers.
As membership grows, I plan to continue with more focused and interactive travel projects.
I would love to share another journey like this with you and help shorten the sharpest aspects of winter. I am planning another 'In Pursuit of Spring' journey for the same time next year - one that might take us into Ireland from Scotland and then back into Wales and England.
To help with covering the costs of the this journey and to support future projects I will be offering my original In Pursuit of Spring Sketchbook up for sale for £500.
Purchase my original 'In Pursuit of Spring' Sketchbook.
Help support future projects like this.
Click here for more information
Andy Marshall
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Andy your work is becoming wonderful, remarkable. A so-called breakdown has been milled into its constituent parts, becoming profound construction: through perception, architecture, the lens and the pen. In your Repton crypt essay a deep description of our social anxiety - and our reason to be....
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
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