-
“Onwards to pass home. Stopping as skylarks spotted.Rising from field. A flitter of wing, whirring in vertical lift. As they do… then song ascending.”My Aberdeenshire, Tifty childhood home, surrounded by arable landscape. Farmland fields, with crops in rotation.Ground nesting birds. Stubble fields upon harvest.Grasses blown in breeze. The soft “shush” as the wind passed through the barley crops.The gentle vibration of seed heads, awns and spindle stalks; moving in sequence, undulating as if to dance.The skylarks rising up. Ascending in sky song. Their rapturous shimmer chorus, cloud held. Stratus, alto, cirrus. Sky singers.They are synonymous. The planted fields and the sky song…For me, intertwined and integral, to one another.One cannot exist without the other.A few summers ago, that season I remember I hadn’t yet heard a skylark… I was worried, and wondered, had the Tifty skylarks left?Visiting with my children, we went a walk, and there they were. Two! Together in sky and in song. With the field in growth below… yielding.Overwinter stubble fields, from harvested crops provide precious and perfect conditions for these ground nesters.For those that fly so high, they choose to rest in the lowest of places.When habitat prevails.My wish, my hope, for them to always keep singing.Smallest of skylarks. Vertical flights, and horizontal felds.Sky song.A Harvest Song.Our Harvest Home.”~ Jenna Martin LeitchThe above piece of writing is the piece of prose I wrote to stand alone, but also, compliment my drawing “Our Harvest Song”, which was displayed as part of the exhibition “Harvest / Lammas” at the gorgeous gallery of ‘Foursticks’ in Falkland, Fife throughout the month of August and into September.A wonderful exhibition, with so many artists on show, each translating the idea of the harvest into whatever it spoke of to them.Art is a way to express and tell our stories, rich and emotional. Foursticks the perfect place, in so many ways, for me to tell this one.
