pilgrim

mixed media on canvas with earth and ash
23×23 inches

There are a couple of verses written in gold around the edge of this canvas:

“The low light gave the birds bright bodies;
the earth came to them,
in the lowest place supported them,
made from this one sound, never to be exhausted.

I am in league with the elements,
I am in their pattern and,
knowing that you are in mine,
I give my heart to you.”

I wanted to give the impression of a bell in this painting, a bell buried in the soil that summons the living and the dead, but unfortunately it has not come out so well in the photograph. There remains, though, in the sky the vibrations of the bell and the demarcation of a time out of time, of a pilgrimage I made. It is quite subtle, anyway.

I am always trying to say something about the relationship between heaven and earth in my work, and the bell has this power to bring them together in the middle ground, signifying a communion with the unknown. There are also certain memories of sounds – some painful, some healing – that seem to me purifying and initiatory: I heard the sound of the bell, I descended into the valley, and time, and my limitations within it, dissolved for a while.

(As a footnote, I have tended to use colour mostly unconsciously, but I cansee here that the red is a nocturnal colour, that which burns within us and within the earth, risen to the surface. It is here the colour of a change and a regeneration that is soon to occur; it is a secret and a truth, ready to be revealed. It is the bond between two people and of love rediscovered.)

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