I was pleased to meet with Phoebe Sleath a week after the successful defence of her doctoral thesis. This gave an opportunity for her to reflect and decompress after the intense work of writing up and preparation for an academic viva.
The chosen venue was Greyhope Bay centre overlooking the coast, entrance to Aberdeen Harbour and North Sea. Sitting there has the benefits of feeling in the environment while safely protected behind large glass panels and warmed by a wood burning stove. As we talked we could watch the wind, rain, sun and cloud in an ever-changing array of watercolour skies. The centre sits appropriately on a headland with sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks that illustrate fundamental geological ideas.
Phoebe brought her field note books, which combine both artistic and scientific observations. She had started sketching and painting ‘en plein air’ as an act of observation during PhD fieldwork in locations such as Tuscany and Pembroke:
“I painted the vibrant viridian sea and the deep cobalt sky, and then I moved to the rocks, thick paint for the Windsor red mudstones and diluted washes for the pale grey sandstones. As I painted the wind blew the clouds away from the sun and the light changed, moving and deepening the shadows. I mixed red and blue for dark purple to bring out the different faults and fractures. I realised that I was looking at the rocks in a different way, that painting was guiding my thoughts, and creating my scientific method. I felt a beautiful clarity and connection, in both looking at the landscape as a whole and the rocks and structure in all their details. I was enjoying being in the scientific process. I started to ask myself questions, had other geologists been here before me? Had they sat in the same spot? Had they seen the outcrop in the same way?”
Sketching and painting the rocks required taking the time to observe the details of the structure of the Earth. This is perhaps more mindful and meditative an approach than measurement or photography alone. During our conversation, Phoebe stressed the process of observation as much as the products of paintings and papers. She articulates this through a film and workshops as part of diverse mountain festivals, or during her work as a climber and Mountain Leader.
So why does this matter? In trying to piece together the complex structure of the earth, geologists often have to combine sparse data from outcrops while trying to visualise underyling patterns and processes in three dimensions and over geological time - while bearing in mind that "All models are wrong, but some are useful” (George Box). It is important to keep testing models agains field observations. This in turn relies on how things are seen by the observer.
Reflecting on our dialogue reminded me of the song by Canadian singer songwriter Bruce Cockburn:
Little round planet
In a big universe
Sometimes it looks blessed
Sometimes it looks cursed
Depends on what you look at obviously
But even more it depends on the way that you see.
Phoebe Sleath’s field notebook
Greyhope Bay Centre.
https://www.greyhopebay.com/
Phoebe Sleath. 2024. Linking Geology and Art in the field - insights from mountains and fold-thrust structures. Sedgewick Club talks, University of Cambridge.
https://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/223648
Phoebe Sleath. 2024. Creativity and geology. European Geophysical Union.
https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/gd/2024/09/18/creativity-and-geology/
Phoebe Sleath, Clare Bond and Rob Butler. 2024. Ramps first – Interpreting thrust nucleation in multilayers. Journal of Structural Geology, vol. 185,105190
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191814124001421
Bruce Cockburn. 1989. Child of the Wind.
https://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/cotw.html