There’s a passage that I find really moving. It comes from Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living which I selected as an inspirational text (see The Cost Of Living). In it she describes how she felt after her mother died and, in particular, her reaction after coming across a postcard her mother had sent her.

“My mother had made a biro’d X on the front of the postcard and written’ X is where I am’… It is this X that touches me most now, her hand holding the biro, pressing it into the postcard, marking where she is so that I can find her.”

In response, I had an urge to do something similar. I’ve had an image in my head for some time. I looked at the satellite image of the village where my mother grew up, of the church where my parents were married, and of the churchyard where they now rest, together with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and other distant relations. The image was taken on a sunny day with snow on the ground, and I love the shadows which are cast by the trees and the buildings, in particular, the church; the shadow of the spire revealing a building, which is otherwise indistinct from the air, as being a church.

Luckily, after a bit of research I managed to work out how to remove the road and building labels.

So, I made a cyanotype. It’s only A4 in size. I’m thinking about making it larger, say, A3. I don’t think that I can make the image any sharper, but I don’t think that really matters – it’s not about the detail of the buildings; it’s about the shadows revealing the nature of the buildings, about the sense of place and about the topography; the tramlines in the fields, the clusters of trees in the middle of fields and the pattern of the roads I walked down as a child. I love the patchwork nature of the countryside. I know that I’m coming home when I see it from a plane.

I’ve put in an ‘x’ but black ink doesn’t really work. I might try red, or maybe replace the ‘x’ with a location pin instead which might contrast well with the historical feel of the cyanotype.

There’s not been much experimenting. I think it’s because I’ve known what I wanted to do for a while and it was a clearly formed idea. It’s been an easy process and a cathartic one, but it does make me feel sad. My parents were my anchor to the past and without them I feel adrift from where I came from, and from a substantial part of my history.