ART BY RICHARD BARTLE | CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTIST: RUNNING ALONG THE PEARLS

Richard Bartle

Running Along The Pearls

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"The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky"

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Running Along the Pearls is a series of paintings inspired by the landscape I encountered, quite literally at my feet, while running along the Cornish coastal path between Lands’ End and Penzance. The title refers to an area known as The String of Pearls, a short section of rounded boulders and giant pebbles on the shore near St. Loy. The actual project relates to the whole twenty-one miles, from the rocky trail in the west, to the urban foot path in the east. The work was made both on site in the makeshift studio I fashioned alongside my camp in Treen and at my studio in Sheffield.

I quoted Haruki Murakami above because at the time that I was camping and running, and making the work in Cornwall, I was also reading his semi-autobiographical book - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It was under this influence that I saw how the obsessive nature of the creative mind is so very often brought into a very productive place while one is running. With particular attention in my own case, on the shifting perspective between the objective and treacherous nature of the rough landscape below my feet, and the more subjective and meandering thought processes that happened along the way.