Wicklow Way, Trailscapes, 2019
Back in December I made what I’ve temporarily called trailscapes. Another creation in its infancy, I was reminded of them yesterday as I was tidying up my notes, and decided they might be something nice to share. Below is what I was thinking at the time.
When I walk, each trail feels like a world of it’s own.
The line it creates trails across the maps in my hand, across the ground in front of me, across my memory of where I have come from, and projected into my expectations of what is ahead.
Looking at my feet I see the line extend away from me as clear as day, a path worn into the soil. Lifting my gaze it dissolves into the lay of the land, becoming airborne as I invisibly connect the dots between the yellow way makers that I can see criss-crossing the landscape ahead of me. The trail, the line, is the centre of my world - everything is thought of in relation to its proximity to the line. How much of a deviation is it to that spot? What will I naturally pass just by following this line?
And all of these lines I walk are fragments of the whole piece: not physically connected to each other, worlds of their own, and yet part of my walk and my project. I connect these lines through my travels, each world affecting how I experience the next and understand the previous.
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It was along such lines of thought that these “trailscapes” came to be. Each image features the shape of a trail that I walked, often hundreds of kilometers condensed into a small twisted squiggle. The second part of the piece is an image I made along that trail that, for me, feels like an image that represents the trail. The line of the trail crosses and image, defines the space and changes the image from a place to look into, to an abstracted space. The circle creates a world, and the trail takes you through its world and out the other side.
South Leinster Way, Trailscapes, 2019