The Crash of Bottle Banks: 1
Upper panel reads:
A Fly Becomes a Buzzard.
Plein Air Sleeping and Plein Air Painting on the Third Morning of a Twenty Day Walk.
Lower panel reads:
Painted on the Third Afternoon of a Twenty Day Walk. What a Thrill it was to Watch You Hang a River Round Your Neck.
Watercolour and pencil on paper stacked onto wood. 78 × 58 cm. 2025
The Crash of Bottle Banks: 2
Upper panel reads:
Hello Blue Fingered Forest.
Painted on the Fifth Afternoon of a Twenty Day Walk.
Lower panel reads:
I'm All Cold Inside, Bring Me My Cheap Yellow Poncho.
Painted on the Sixth Dawn of a Twenty Day Walk.
Watercolour and pencil on paper stacked onto wood. 78 × 58 cm. 2025
The Crash of Bottle Banks: 3
Lower panel reads:
Painted on the Eighth Afternoon of a Twenty Day Walk.
Upper panel reads:
Painted on the Ninth Morning. Walking Here I Wrote
– Lightning Bolts in the Forest Stars Battle the Falling Snow.
Watercolour and pencil on paper stacked onto wood. 78 × 58 cm. 2025
The Crash of Bottle Banks: 4
Upper panel reads:
Painted on the Tenth Morning of a Skeleton Walk.
Lower panel reads:
And then the madness of mountain streams begins, it happens every time you sleep by them. Tonight, by the mountain lake you hear builders hammering and a radio tuning in and out of music stations. Tomorrow, below Rhinog Fach you will hear the crash of bottle banks and a tannoy prattling at a country fair. Previous nights have been Hindi music on an overnight coach, a nearby rave, women quarrelling, the shouts of angry men searching for trespassers. You turn in your sleeping bag blind as a grub. Is this the meaning of a babbling brook, you think but these babblings crowd with purpose. You half fear river spirits and moth coated tribes tracking up retreating glaciers. When the children laugh you pull your hat over your ears. Then in the morning the rivers return to their gurgles and roars, and you are alone in your Gore-Tex with your Ordnance Survey maps and pastoral watercolours. You crawl like a weevil down the glaciated vale, past the shepherds quad bikes and abandoned boulders, past the dry stone graveyard, the raucous pub, and up the next mountain and then the next, and the next, until you see the sea to the North. In Beddgelert a pub landlord gives you a free meal, in Conwy a child tries to stamp on you. Your weevil limbs scuttle you off to the station and the next train home.
Painted on the Twelfth Afternoon of a Moonless Walk.
Watercolour and pencil on paper stacked onto wood. 78 × 58cm. 2025
oliver dorrell
