After visiting Paper Mill Lock, Essex and walking along the canal, I stopped to embrace the peace and tranquillity around me. As I turned around, I was greeted by the sun reflecting on the water below me to reveal a huge cluster of dazzling dragonflies dancing along the banks and across the ripples. What struck me most were the colours: electric blues, striking yellows and reflective emeralds, all darting around to create a kaleidoscopic canvas of glistening activity. I was completely transfixed and my creativity sparked immediately. I wrote the idea for such a piece down in my sketchbook and three years later, the opportunity arrived to compose the work as part of my postgraduate composition portfolio.
I sought out to learn more about the species and was put in touch with Wilder Rivers and Protected Species Manager, Darren Tansley of the Essex Wildlife Trust who kindly gave me a crash course on all things dragonfly and damselfly. It was fascinating to learn about the species and their differing flight patterns, underlying predatorial instincts and to my astonishment, their tendency to fly faster when it is hotter! These snippets of information all found their way into the sketchbook to beginning sculpting the idea into dots on the page.
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