Industry in out of the way places

​So, I've cleared the decks, and am now looking at new subject matter: evidence of industry in out of the way places. I have always had a fascination with industrial landscapes, having grown up with it in my family.

Back in 2007, I made a series of works based around a scrapyard. It was full of life and interesting colours and shapes. I'm now turning my eye to Cumbria's industrial identity. This is how I'm defining the project.

• Industry as defined as 'hard work', encompassing domestic, wartime, and children's jobs, as well as more conventional activity such as manufacturing and mining.
• Site specific - all industry, from all time, but with a deliberate focus on out of the way places, such as above 200m. Mountainous regions such as Cumbria, have attracted certain types of industries and work, and the nature of these is very unique due to the geography of the area.

This is how I'm going to approach the work

• exploring the use of oil paint in the depiction of landscape and structures.
• exploring oil pastels, soft pastels, charcoal and graphite as portable media to annotate the anatomy and atmosphere of remote sites.
• Not so much focusing on the depiction of form, but the work done in creating it. That is to say, the forces that have been involved in the formation of what we see in the landscape, deriving from human hand or machine.
• I'm very much influenced by Anselm Kiefer, the materials and methods of the artwork re-enacting or acting as metaphors of the original events.
• I am also influenced by Turner, who was fascinated by monumental forces harnessed, by human machine. He would endure long periods of exposure in mountainous terrain and exposed conditions, as he strove to gain a lived experience of processes, and industries. His 19,000 sketches are a record of this exploration.