Meg Rodger - Shepherdess and Environmental Artist

It seems strange somehow that I have not yet shared with you my dual identity of shepherdess and artist. I actually had to double check through my blogs to make sure but … no I haven’t told you about my environmental art practice.

Living and working on this tiny, remote Hebridean island – a speck amidst a chain of islands on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, the beautiful and harsh environment has a profound influence on my creativity.

To dwell in such a place, where the forces and cycles of nature are extreme, is both inspiring and humbling. Nature here is dictator, rhythm setter and provider despite our technological advancements.

I work creatively with natural phenomena, taking my inspiration from the complexity, strength and beauty of the oceans and wild lands.

Appreciating the knowledge, skills and culture of the people who dwell in these places is part of this process. However, my work is from the perspective that humans are not central but merely part of these naturally occurring systems and cycles that are complex, integrated and vast.

The elements here can be extremely harsh and unforgiving but over time it is exactly these qualities that I have learnt to work with rather than battle, to allow their forces and qualities to be channeled through me and to generate art work.

On fair weather days, I use my tripod. The pen moves freely over the paper directed by the wind. Once the drawing has been completed, my understanding of the wind drawing process is such that I can stand back and read the nature of the wind for that period of time. Blots relate to lulls when the pen has rested on the paper, darkness in certain quarters indicates the prevailing wind direction and strength.

The backdrop to this process is the rhythm of the Shipping Forecast, established in 1861 by Robert FitzRoy, formerly Captain of the Beagle on expedition with Charles Darwin 1831-1836. The Shipping Forecast is now 150+ years old, everyday it has been a reliable and dependable life-line for anyone making a living from the sea.

Unfortunately, FitzRoy’s inspirational work in meteorology was not fully appreciated in his lifetime. He was lambasted by businessmen concerned that his forecasts kept their ships in port, discredited in the press by politicians seeking to further their own careers and under pressure to justify his forecasting methodology by competitive fellow meteorologist. Sadly, as a result, in 1865 FitzRoy suffered a mental breakdown and took his own life. For thirteen years the Shipping Forecast fell silent but those at sea and those who would listen, finally successfully lobbied Parliament for its return, resulting in the British Meteorological Office of today. In 2002, in recognition of his ground-breaking work, the Met Office changed the Shipping Forecast sea area of Finisterre to FitzRoy.

During the mid 1800s, FitzRoy and his contemporaries researched and studied during a burgeoning time within the sciences. In particular, James Tyndall’s research was fundamental to the current climate change debate. On the 7 February 1861, he presented his conclusions to the Royal Society ‘On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours’, what we now term ‘Green House Gases.’

My wind drawings are comparable to statistical scatter plots. Each mark is a record of the direction and strength of the wind with the darkest areas representing the tendency over time. The patterning is similar to the statistics within the climate change debate, where there are so many variables that the associated scientists are constantly challenged to justify their forecast. Unfortunately, like my wind drawings, increasingly there is recognition that the inference is towards a dark pattern of change.

In honour of FitzRoy, the title of each of my wind drawings is the Shipping Forecast relating to the day on which the drawing was made.

Living at 57* North in the Outer Hebrides, our life is also defined by sunlight and darkness and my Solargraph ‘Sketchbook’ is an on-going exploration of this defining elemental quality.

At this latitude, only 9 degrees below the Arctic circle, during summer the sun remains in our sky almost 24 hours a day while at the winter solstice on 21st December the sun barely rises above the horizon and we are in velvety darkness from mid afternoon. Thankfully, from this point onwards the sun’s arc increases a little more each day turning us slowly towards spring.

My Solargraphs are made by installing small pin-hole cameras outside in the landscape for several months. As time passes, depending on the time of year the arc of the sun rises or lowers just a little more each day. This sunlight etches into the photographic paper and once processed, results in a beautiful, iridescent white rainbow of light.

During several months, these little pin-hole cameras endure quite extreme challenges. Seagulls rest on them and pick holes through the lids. Gale force winds try their best to remove them from their fixtures or at least wobble them loose. On my croft, livestock investigate and scratch on them. There is never any certainty what kind of results will be revealed after many months in situ … if any results at all!!

Now I am embarking on a new journey, a new body of work. For many years I have been fascinated by the archaeology within this landscape. In particular, the Neolithic chambered tombs of North Uist which present an archaeological anomaly … why were there so many? Around 25 of the 40+ burial chambers found in the Outer Hebrides are situated in Langass Moor, North Uist and yet nobody knows why.

Our landscapes are continually altered through the activities of all living beings, so long as life goes on, they are continually under construction and never complete. In the words of the anthropologist Tim Ingold “… we shape them <environments> as they shape us …”. Thus culture is unique to a particular environment and time but it is not static and continues to evolve.

Archaeological sites are ‘dated’ to their period of construction and habitation but this does not mean they ceased to exist at that point. Humans have had interactions and relationships with these sites for thousands of years since.

The challenge for my creative practice is to bringing out a sense of humanity from such archaeological sites a touch stone or “shared experience” between the Neolithic people of North Uist who “buried’ their dead 4000 years ago in such sites and our contemporary society.

For me this touch stone, this shared human experience that links back thousands of years to our ancestors, is the night sky. In the Hebrides, we are blessed with dark skies (no city light pollution). On a clear winters night with no moon, we will often stand on our door step to marvel at the northern lights. It is this sense of wonder, sense of infinity, sense of our smallness, in the context of systems and cycles that are complex, integrated and vast that I have now started to draw. Neolithic Skyscapes is a work in progress, a new journey for my art practice that has only just begun.

If you would like to find out more about my art work please visit: Meg Rodger – Art

To purchase a solargraph or enquire about commissioning a wind drawing please visit: Meg Rodger – Buy Art

Celebrating the Creativity of Women in the Hebrides – this blog is the first in a series that will celebrate the creativity of women in the Hebrides during the month of November – next edition Friday 19th November: Sharon McPherson – Nature and Landscape Artist.