Summer Silo

High up on a ridge sits a large silo. It resembles a large church, reminiscent of those that one sees in some American country landscapes, with its simple but solid form and plain bright paint. It is sometimes known as the ‘cathedral on the ridge’ but this imposing structure is in the south west of France in the heart of the Périgord Vert and reflects the agricultural importance of the cooperative in action.

Here the silo sits amidst a variety of summer crops, alongside ploughed fields ready for the next sowing, dwarfing nearby walnut trees and a collection of electricity and telegraph poles. It seems to stand guard, surveying the chalky soil and season’s growth for the cooperative of farmers who depend upon it.
Its presence is a reassuring marker, a point of reference in this landscape, standing proud against the enormity of sky that surrounds it. Only the crueller elements of that sky can throw the silo’s solid presence into doubt and its apparently strong shoulders also seem to carry a certain weight in the knowledge that a merciless change in the weather can change everything.

Artist notes:
From the moment I moved to my home in the Dordogne, there was something about this silo nearby that spoke to me. Its isolation on the ridge was so marked and its presence impossible to ignore. It somehow reminded me of a painting I had fallen in love with at an early age, a work by American artist Andrew Wyeth called ‘Christina’s World’ with a barn and house similarly set high on a ridge against an empty skyline.

The simplicity of the large structure juxtaposed against a huge sky required a simple treatment. The composition required no extra components but to be shown as is, in its unique and uncomplicated form. I decided to treat the surface with layers of thin paint, creating an unfussy surface with a minimum of texture, allowing one layer of paint to glow through to the next.