The photo at the top of the page is in reality four feet by six feet, done in Prismacolor on cotton fabric, and is a work in progress. It will likely be always a work in progress and a work of my heart.
The surface of Dunnottar sets about 160 feet above the waters of the North Sea on the eastern coast of what is now Scotland and is, in area, about four acres (roughly the size of four football fields) and diamond-shaped.
It is today much different from what this piece depicts. There have been many generations between to both build the structures whose impressive ruins dominate Dunnottar, and for them to have become as they now are.
Their history is a story all to itself, one to be told by others. Our stories are more about the before times, and perhaps the after times, of that story.
This piece represents, for me, a time long past, a place that once may have been.
In the foreground, a path that leads to safety. At the head of the path an observation tower used to observe and record the heavens. To the right a Grove of oaks and to the left the beginning of a windbreak and pens/stables for livestock. Beyond, barely discernible, the roundhouse, smithy, and homes of our Dunnottar Family.
Unseen as yet, a small chapel, gardens of healing herbs, and storage buildings are tucked between the Grove and the home buildings. If you look closely you may see a trail of path twining its way up the right (south) cliff from the beach. Almost unseen from this vantage, a beach to the north also sweeps the shoreline. The pair of beaches, from above, resemble the spread wings of a flying bird, the ravine at the shore adding to the illusion, and the diamond of Dunnottar itself creating the tail of a Raven.
In our fictional stories Dunnottar is a place blessed, a place to which folk are drawn in times of distress to find safety, a place from which emanates a sense of security, of peace. It is at the hearth of the Dunnottar Roundhouse that we listen to the histories of old.
And so, seeing this simple work of colored pencil on cotton has a way of taking me back, back, back - or forward, forward, forward - to spend a little time with the folk who live in the pages of the stories of SONG.
I want to add touches of color here and there, want to put in the rest of the details, want to strew it with flowers. It is a work in progress; all of those things, and no doubt more, will one day show up on that piece of cotton fabric.
One day, in another piece, I would also like to bring the homes of our Dunnottar Family into the foreground. They are beautiful, and not as one might expect from fifteen hundred years ago. With a plenitude of materials, creativity, and skill available to them, I cannot imagine our Dunnottar Family being the least bit satisfied with dull homes.
At any rate, the need to bring this piece of work to the front of my mind may have any number of meanings. The most likely one is that I am becoming 'homesick' for that hearth, as are others. They want to 'go back' they say, and ask me 'where are the next books?'
That I do not know, where are the next books ... they come as they will and not always at the most opportune moments, so I am biding as I too want to 'go back' but needs must await the invitation, so to speak.
Meanwhile, here is Dunnottar of old, to remind us of stories yet untold.
