We first discovered the films of Margaret Tait at the NFT in the 1990’s, and I was very pleased recently to be able to buy a collection of her shorter films on DVD. My all-time favourite is the short reel/reel John McFadden – an exercise in joyous anarchic subversive wildness – and I also love Colour Poems. I find her open, poetic, penetrating vision very inspiring, and I’ve just made one or two works based on her texts, including Light music (a one elephant book) from her lyrical voice-over in Terra Firma, a section of Colour Poems.
Light music, one-off artist’s book, signed, open 80cm x 60cm, closed 20cm x 20cm, with cover; handmade papers, watercolour, acrylic and ink. This work has been acquired by the National Library of Scotland for their collection of artists’ books, and I’ll be adding details of shelfmark and visiting opportunities when it has been catalogued.
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Daughters of Earth 
August 2, 2011 at 3:35 pm
[…] This year I’ve been working on a series of contemporary illuminated manuscripts reflecting the passing of time and the turning year. The largest works (so far) are the group of four books that make up Love and Freedom: Burns’ Year which will also be in the NLS collection; these four books are each made from a single huge sheet of handmade paper, torn and folded into a sequence of pages, but possible to restore to the whole sheet again, like a magic carpet that transports you to another time and place, but which you can also fold up and carry about with you – the essence of ‘book’, in fact. I’ll be writing more about the ideas behind these books (and showing how they look) in September; meanwhile you can see Light Music with its luminous text from Margaret Tait’s film Colour Poems in a page by page sequence in a Work in Focus post – click here. […]