Dug-outs

Dug-outs / Rifiugi. Tracy Mackenna, 2020

Watercolour on watercolour paper, 30 x 21 cms

This is one drawing in the series Structures

The drawings depict architectural structures currently being subsumed by the forest due to natural rewilding.

Starting at my home, I walk out and onto ancient footpaths and into the woods in Italy’s Apennine mountains, as I have done for decades. Repeatedly walking the routes that create a network between villages, I have witnessed the covering and partial disappearance of architectural structures made by the Sannite and Roman peoples, and family members who have worked the land since.

As the structure of the Italian family and labour patterns continue to shift, fewer people are sustained by working their land. Dry-stone terraces built by hand to clear the ground for arable and pasture use are now largely shrouded in green: oak, beech and birch grow undisturbed, nurturing wild boar, deer, pine martin, porcupine, chamoix, wolves and bears. Hunting has diminished, birds are returning. Orchids and saffron-bearing croci give way to fungi as each new year ends.

I live between Scotland and Italy, and these watercolour drawings were made from memory to make place present, whilst in Covid self-isolation in Strathaven in Dec 2020.