Summer Solstice is a well-honoured tradition in many cultures and the quintessential image for most is Stonehenge.
Many summers ago, I had the good fortune to take a trip to see the ancient stones and monuments of Argyll with my daughter Lauren when she was studying History of Art at Edinburgh and developed an interest in ancient stones and all things medieval. Our favourite site was Temple Wood, an intriguing stone circle in a magical place even if your name doesn’t have Celtic origins. It simply begged to be written about, and Midsummer Glen was the result. I hope I’m forgiven for changing the name to Ivy Cross.
The stones and setting are similar to the ones in the story, but I have tweaked a few details. There is no real Midsummer Glen, but it is based on Kilmartin Glen, an area simply littered with prehistoric monuments. I retained the name in the form of the pedagogic prehistory expert, James Kilmartin Esquire, whose style is reminiscent of many nineteenth-century scholars.
Currently, I’m updating the covers of my books with original cyanotype prints and Midsummer Glen was the easiest of all, given that I’d already been dabbling in the dark arts of digital negatives and produced a series of prints based on standing stones. The stones in the illustration are fiction, and the swirling effects suggestive of primitive spirits, created by the addition of rock salt and soap suds, textured with biodegradable cling film, would you believe.
Is nothing sacred?!
From June 21, the date of the Summer Solstice, you can read the first instalment of Midsummer Glen on my blog. Chapters two and three appear on subsequent days.
If you can't wait, the quartet, Seasonal Disorders, is on Amazon.
To see some of the prints for yourself, check out Warwickshire Open
Studios, June 18 to July 3. I'm #148 and will also be showing work at a
summer exhibition at the magnificently medieval St John the Baptist
church, central Coventry.