Rose Arbuthnott and Alex Goodman: Tangled Roads, Journeys of the West Coast, Wetpaint Gallery, Stroud, UK, 2015

We flew steadily across the highland way,, stopping off near glencoe for sun down and sleep, a torrenting waterfall, where we eventually found a pool to wash our cooking pots and plates and dishes. Before we reached this great mountain trellis we stopped in the douldrums at the crook of the pass and I made drawings of the sedate pools and islands great stones and disparate trees that is today the morrane dropped by the great glaciers of the past. Alex sat in the van and listened to the radio and wrote . it was the first time she was through glencoe and it was a lot to absorb. Drawing the morane, water trees hanging on to little rocks on island a hotch potch of little crabby islands across a scarlet future. The heather scorched by wind I sat wind lashed watching ripples and as the sky changed its clowd. Japanese paper black and white this was an awesome spatial discipline and nervous of the elements I dipped my brushes. 

Scurrying through novices to this road we visited castles and tried lanes the van vum vooing happy as the sun paled itself apon our rumblings and dinner again an organisational feat in this van. Oban! And we picked up gas staying in an awkward and sad carpark in the rain grim and lost the keys for 3 hours. What a day eventually saved by four glorious wondering  craftsman fully frocked with bundles in the old german journeymans tradition. We tried to persuade them to journey with us but they were on a rush to reach Ireland from Ayr, so we were 6 for 10 miles and we departed a particularly strong and handsome one with blue eyes I will ever know as Simon. No phones- they were never to be met again. They spoke broken English and we exchanged stories and groceries.  Now with gas on board after 4 stops we left the marina with the right one, small and blue. We even saw a hover craft being inflated remarkable, we set off down the coast and hit the painting trail, the plan was to visit every spot I had viewed and painted on the first journey in merry autumn of 2014. This time with an abstract back bone and some bleeding heart for my Mexican friends who had disbanded after the first food residency my pictures were nothing of the natural colours and pure elements of weather as before. London had rubbe its soul on me and these were edgy-london, surreal-mexican and abstracted- abstract……………………………………………

The show includes one earlier piece Wind boat done as a memory of Scotland from my cosy gloucestershire kitchen.

Colours hissing against naturals

Van in mud best idea then the trouble

The ravine dirt and water

Pulling the van out held breath and much revs and force

Splitting the engine, fighting we scrambled to reverse her

Corner fighting she dived into the road me pushing

Its amazing one human can have any hands on effect to such a tonne of metal and plastic

But she dived into the road all the same

Breathes out, fine, job done.

We found a marvellous place 2 streams down and cooked the loveliest and I must say largest 

mussels I ever picked flavoursome with onions. And discussed swimming to the little island 

shadowed off shore best night of our trip!

Next we were at spleen my dream sea lock, the most complex coast in the southern west. across the 

greatest bridge a perfect hump back so you could not see oncoming cars as you tipped its brink and 

past where I had previously been bitten by a huge hound and had my elbow in a sling poor me! But 

onwards this time and alex along too, great! Round 2. Paintings pipped us  as we passed birds and 

grasses of every sort, spring had erupted and july was fervid and rich. We swam off the very end 5 

miles or more down a 2 m width road. I pushed my legs into the clear water cold like ice and full of 

brown weed bladder wrack. 

On our return we found a path alomost vertical to a chapel famed by the map that we flurried 

through. Always there to show us… where to go next. The church, a door pushed open and there 

were gravel cold and shaded with Perspex pearly light revealing tomb stones of a long ago with 

carvings of knights and trellis designs of celtic times. Alex dared to paint but we ripped away as it 

was also a cold and spooky place with nature singing green songs outside.so we stuck with the 

landscapes. almost a moonscape covered by moss and low grass with upturned boats and old jettys 

and sheds horses remarkable against skies noble even as our wabi sabi setting them in verdency- 

grass up to our knees and insects. 

One night we parked on a beach a beautiful place on the base of Kintyre, among cow pats and rusty 

spades I made recordings of poetry I had written en train on the east side.; Videos for billie hanne a 

fabulous creative poet-dancer I was to work with the following week back at goldsmiths south east 

London. Landscape held me safe for these experiments. Once I stood imagining rain falling evry 

where around -a samuri in the rain with my eyes closed………………….

We stopped by Rupert’s at skipness, glum as ever we drank beer and watched his cousins put up a 

barn tent for their wedding the following weekend, beer in hand this was a sweet relaxing moment 

though Rupert was worse for wear in the usual green wellingtons he had put off his travels further 

in order to mend the farms roof. It’s a hard life up here. Where forestry,which is ruperts life time 

vocation is an endless fight against the family depressed in age and finances keeping a glorious place 

so far from anywhere from constant deterioration and rhododendrums, and sometime haggises 

which eat the new shootlings.!

We stayed happily, inebriated on the pebble front; across to arran the view stretched marvellously 

as the ferries tooed and frooed. Later alex decided to sleep on the beach in a duvet, I wrote her a 

song and picked pebbles quartz crystal smoothed into white circles By the tides heel.

We drove across arran uneventfully tried to find some salvaged wood from an old shelf in a ruin but 

alas we were overlooked by a patio lunch party and chickened out of the steal. New paintings? 

Conservation it’s a difficult relativity in culture..

A deep earth laid from elbows

Deeper perplexed skin free from all

Deep hollows of elsbeth’s climbOpen areas cordoned off from

Thirstiness and time begins

Below face time continued

Arrows caught in mud

As still shining drew them

And shrill and tangled

Mud shrieked and yelp.

And disguised arrowsman

In cliff riding across mist.