How Place Informs the Work, Pt. 2 - Pouch Cove Residency

Panorama of Pouch Cove, Newfoundland 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

It’s all about the Cove here.

The landscape pulls you in, encircles you with black rocks and sea foam and wild wind. Not much else meets the eye in this little town by the North Atlantic. And it’s jagged rugged beauty is enough.

Futile attempt to capture the coastline. 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

So it’s fitting that my first painting is an expression of the land/seascape. I didn’t mean to or plan to - in fact I rarely do literal landscapes. But this had to happen and who am I to resist?

For this residency, I brought a 30” x 18 foot roll of Yupo paper - a synthetic paper that doesn’t buckle or warp and has a smooth slick surface. My plan was to create one long painting like a travelogue of my experience. (I have since ordered another roll that is 30 feet long that I also hope to have finished by the time I leave here on Dec. 18).

30” x 40” acrylic, china marker on Yupo paper. 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

The first part of the painting - shown above - happened immediately and insisted on being defined on all 4 sides. I decided I would cut it free instead of having it extend further along down the line of the roll.

The rest of the painting has taken a more abstract and lyrical turn and is still finding it’s feet. The incessant wind here whips and churns up the atmosphere, making the lines in the painting below dance around the surface in varying ways. This is yet another way that the environment so directly influences the kind of marks I make. Weather!

The roll of Yupo paper on the wall. 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

Painting in process. Wind and waves have their way. 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

On my daily walks along the East Coast Trail that meanders 336km around the Avalon Peninsula in this stretch of Newfoundland, the path grips the steep rocky cliffs and then passes through what seem like faerie forests - stick straight pine trees that have an eerie stunted quality. These lines too made an impression and landed in my long fold out accordion style sketchbook, and ultimately into the larger painting.

My accordion style sketchbook. 2019 ©Amy Guion Clay

So it’s evident that the work I’m doing here could never be done anywhere else. Even if it has my preferential colors and signature hand, each mark is informed by my new environment and the swirling elemental world that has carved it’s sculptured landscape. I allow it to be so, and simply observe where these moments take me.

And then I eagerly wait to see where it leads to next!