I Walk The Line

I've wanted to write something on this blog about Richard Long for ages. Long's art is hard to define in a few words. He makes art in the natural landscape from pieces of it - sticks, stones, seaweed, slates, pine needles. Out of these naturally evolved, 'found' objects he creates alignments, cairns, circles, spirals and other forms. These temporary structures made of natural materials are then left to the elements to be worked on and altered by nature itself. But he also uses his own two feet to crease lines, marks, patterns and indentations into the landscape - all in quite soft and eco-friendly ways. These consciously placed imprints may last for some time or may disappear overnight. Long deliberately seeks this impermanent, transient quality in his art. Only the photographs he takes remain as a record of the tracks and traces of his brief passing. The artist himself is invisible, has walked on.

Long is a walking artist - but not in any grand, Romantic, Wordsworthian sense. His eyes are fixed firmly on the ground, watching his feet and where they are taking him. He often walks in straight lines, measuring his progress by leaving stones at equal distances along the path. He's excited by the very idea of walking itself - and all the different styles of walking: walking as exercise and recreation; walking as a channel for reflection or poetic inspiration; walking as pilgrimage. But he's interested above all in new and original ways of walking. Once he threw a stone all the way round an Irish mountain which resulted in just one photograph - captioned Throwing A Stone Around McGillycuddy's Reeks (1977).


Such philosophical ideas about walking, and about old and new ways to walk, interest me too. I'm reminded of Tubewalkers, who trace the London Tube lines above ground from station to station, like human metal detectors or dowsing rods; Pyrenean and Alpine shepherds who still practise transhumance by walking herds and flocks to higher pastures for the summer; walker-adventurers who follow as closely as possible a particular line of latitude or longitude; walker-writers like Iain Sinclair who pioneered his own London orbital walking route shadowing the M25 motorway.


There are many different ways in which to walk and many different paths to follow - both literal and metaphorical. When I think about it, this is in essence what my blog's really about, the common theme which runs through its variousness. Walking in a line or in a circle; walking up a mountain or round a mountain; walking for penitential, religious reasons or purely for pleasure; walking for recreation or inspiration; walking solo or with others; city walking or rural walking; walking across the world or walking in one's own back yard; walking in the mind; walking through life; just walking per se, on its own - can be a creative and artistic act.

The top picture is Richard Long's A Line In Scotland (1981) and the bottom picture is Richard Long's A Line Made By Walking (1967).