A stand-out talk  at the 2024 ‘Earth’s Canvas’ conference was by emerging Scottish artist Calum Wallis. He invited viewers to “engage with deep time when time is tight” by conveying, with realism, images from rock to paper through a lengthy process of drawing, etching and printing. The rocks in question are of the Old Red Sandstone, deposited in rivers in a hot climate around four hundred million years ago south of the equator, and exposed today and eroded by the colder wind, rain and tides north of Arbroath in northeast Scotland.

During the talk, revealing the work (‘Where everything stands, for now’) drew involuntary ‘oohs’ from the audience - rarely, if ever, heard before in the hallowed halls of Burlington House, home of the Geological Society in Picadilly, London. He later returned to the site and what he saw had changed. He emulated the process of erosion by the very bold step of exposing the intricately etched plate to rusting by sea water. Revealing the resulting work ‘In a few moments time’ drew even louder involuntary ‘aaahs’.

Calum’s studio in Dundee displays the geological map of Scotland juxtaposed with photos of interesting rock and stone. Calum’s philosophy is articulated nicely on his website:

‘ … I have found that my true joy in observing stone is not its unblinking, unchanging stasis – rather it’s the fact that stone is alive. It is far too easy to read the face of the earth as static due to our limited scope of a human lifetime. However, by engaging in deep observation one can see stone as it erodes and is rebuilt in new forms …it is taking place in front of us.’

Although his discipline is solitary, he found that:

‘Earth’s Canvas provided a forum that I had no idea I was in need of. My artwork studies erosion and humanities’ place in deep time and it’s making necessitates a large amount of time spent in solitude, both among rocks and in the studio. In the solitude of this practice, I had believed this field of inquiry was narrow - until I attended Earth’s Canvas. Here I met like-minded people who were pushing the boundaries of creative engagement with geology in more directions than I could have imagined …The relevance and timeliness of gathering such thinkers in one room cannot be overstated … catalysts for new ways of seeing and thinking.’

Side-by-side, these etchings illuminate the texture of the rock, narrate the processes of erosion, and provide a memory of significant moments from the ‘Earth’s Canvas’ event.

‘Where everything stands, for now’, 2023 , etching, 62 x 48cm.

‘In a few moments time, etching from heavily rusted plate', 2024, 62 x 48cm.

In the studio

Calum Wallis
https://calumwallisart.com
https://www.instagram.com/calwals
Earth’s Canvas
https://geoscientist.online/sections/unearthed/earths-canvas-2
https://www.earthheritage.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/EH-62_final_web.pdf
Old Red Sandstone
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/3231/
https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/Memoirs/docs/B06846.html
Seaton Cliffs, Arbroath
https://www.scottishgeologytrust.org/geology/51-best-places/seaton-cliffs-arbroath/