GB | You mentioned that when you’re on Everest, and are creating your beautiful images, that life on the ground is not quite what it’s like because there’s the detritus of hundreds of expeditions scattered everywhere. Even so, your work does transmit, in all its forms, a sort of sense of serenity, but in all the times that I’ve looked at it, it never occurred to me to ask if there’s any tension between what you’re seeing and what was really there. Were there, in fact, dangers? I personally have a serious fear of heights, and when I look at the photograph of you sitting at your easel on that great ledge in front of Kaieteur Falls I feel the need to grab on to whatever I’m standing by. I once asked Richard Long if he’d ever had one of his walks spoiled, and he told the story of being in Peru, in the Andes, and being arrested by the Andean Peruvian police to save him from being murdered by the Sendero Luminoso, who had just started. So I wondered, are there events where you thought why, why am I doing this? Did you feel you put yourself in danger in any particular way? TF | Well, I’ve been in serious danger twice. I suppose three times if you count being charged by a bear, but no, I don’t think I’ve ever questioned why I was doing it. Although there are times when you’re bloody uncomfortable and it’s bitterly cold, or the painting is not going very well, and you really just want to be home. You don’t want to be sitting there painting because of the total discomfort. But nonetheless, I think what drives me on is the fact that it’s always taken such a lot of effort to get there, and I can’t come back with nothing. I have to produce something, and so I just get on with it. But in terms of actual danger, it falls into two categories. One is something like when you’re charged by a bear and you have a split second to respond. So you don’t get frightened by it until afterwards, and then you suddenly think, holy cow, that was close. But a couple of times, I’ve had to seriously consider the idea that I might not survive. And that gives you a chance to think about the danger you’re in and whether you regret choosing this way to make art. Once, when I was suffering from acute mountain sickness, my brain was swelled up, so I wasn’t making sense, I wasn’t thinking logically about anything. I wasn’t thinking about whether I was dying or not. I was just thinking, bloody hell, I don’t feel very well. But another time TF | I think so because the first long journey I did was with James Ravilious, the photographer, when we followed Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey [in the Cévennes], it took us about three weeks. Instead of having a donkey, we had a golf trolley. So, we put all our stuff on a golf trolley and hauled that over the Massif Central, and it was then that I realized that if I was going to do paintings on any kind of scale, I was going to have to make sure that I wasn’t carrying any extra weight. It was at that point that I began to figure out ways to make sizable works on site that didn’t need a team of sherpas to carry them. And so, yes, that was a necessity at an early stage. When I went to do the John Muir Trail, where you have to hike for weeks just with what you can manage to carry, I finally realized that I had to really take seriously this whole thing about cutting the handle off my cup, and shortening my toothbrush, and doing anything to save a quarter ounce. James & Tony Leaving Le Monastier, 1982, Travels without a Donkey in the Cévennes Journey. Photograph on paper by James Ravilious, 12 1/4 x 18 1/4 in. / 31 x 46.5 cm Collection of The Foster Museum Tony embarks on his first Journey, Travels without a Donkey in the Cévennes, with photographer James Ravilious and their golf trolley, Modestine, April 1982. 16
