made from winter light

You were made from winter light
Mixed media on board with earth, ash and paper
Approx 2cm x 2cm and 1cm x 2cm each.

solstice door / mountain / solstice door / valley
equinox door / adam / equinox door / longstone
cave of the moon / crucible / earth coat

“The mystery that you live inside
has left its mark like a seed that breaks,
to be bright while you sleep in the earth and the body of time;
out of this world without limits I’ll wish for your heart to wake
from its valley of light.

I’ll take you to the universe, to this point on a line in space,
beyond your body of earth, in this earth of signs;
and out of this world without limits I’ll wish for your heart to wake
from its valley of light,
its valley of light.”

A set of “stones” for ritualistic purposes – a rite of passage, personal transformation, grave goods and so on.

It was inspired by a turkish legend which tells how ‘on the black mountain, streams flooded a cave and filled a pit, shaped like a human being, with mud. The cave acted like a kiln and nine months later the heat of the sun brought the figure to life, the first man.”

winter talismans

Winter Talismans
Mixed media on board with earth, ash and paper
Approx 4cm x 4cm and 3cm x 3cm each.

lethe / hogback / sleeping place (in memory of lorna graves)
forge / sea coat / winter door / odin
temple / sealed door / summer door / munin

alder king

Alder King
Mixed media on canvas with paper, wax, earth and leaves (sycamore, hazel, oak)
60×60cm

“The only truth is the light of your body, the cup and bird of your winter journey, your sticks and bones; the single flame of your singing soul of alder and kingcup, the willow and rose, your hands and feet, will be clean in a morning higher than waking, deeper than sleep.”

This painting has come out of a long period of introspection – a time thinking about redemption and atonement and how I might affect a ritual cleansing of sorts through painting. The result is the alder king – it owes more to odin than christ perhaps but the ideas are the same – a prayer for gnosis, to be made clean through self-sacrifice. I have also been inspired by the thought of Nikos Kazantzakis: in the painting there is both an upward movement toward synthesis, life and immortality, and a second one running downwards, to dissolution, matter and death. Both streams are part of the universe, and being so, are sacred, finding faith and unity at the centre, as symbolised by the turban.

spinning sun, singing soul

Spinning Sun, Singing Soul
Mixed media on canvas with earth, paper, wax and sycamore leaf
60 x 60cm

we were making mornings

We were making mornings
mixed media on canvas with hazel and white poplar leaf
40×40 inches

For the winter solstice. For endings and new beginnings. The following poem is written across the canvas:

I will give him
daylight and mornings,
a doorway and rose;
a boat, a star, and a place to rest;
hands to get dirty; a south, a west,
a willow and drum,
days that can be counted;
the moon and the sun.

I will give him
lovers and sanctuary,
a window and forge;
a clock, a shell, and a time to sleep;
lines to be crossed; a north, an east,
a dog and lamp,
things that can be broken;
the boy and the man.

I will give him
kindness and fables,
a garden and stone;
a map, a cup, and an hour to rise;
a body that bruises; a coat, a wife,
some silver and gold;
a light that can be salvaged;
the new and the old.

Some close ups:

shrine

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

The epigraph written across the canvas reads:

“Make it happen that birds bring the shape from his body,
secure in this memory, in the time of year;
the heart is not lost that was made in thanksgiving,
he will go for the light that lives on your prayer.”

There is always a private story unfolding between two people, and this is just as relevant between the living and the dead. A bond survives, I think, and the story continues with the help of imagination and faith, of celebration and remembrance. I felt quite palpably during the making of this work that the feeling is not one-sided – someone was with me at times and came in response to the strong emotion I felt at writing the poem for him. Perhaps he was thankful that I wanted to honour him, perhaps the trace of him left behind inside me has an independent warmth and energy, perhaps I have made it all up to compensate for my loss; but even if it is all in my imagination I can at least allow myself to believe that it is true, that I have been instructed to care for his soul. It lives in my continual prayer, thought, memory and thanksgiving. Even if it began in imagination, its repetition will make it true, in time and place: this is the belief, that if you believe strongly enough in something, it will be so.

The valley symbol is the purest form I know of representing my connection with the universe. It works on so many levels – a place to sleep, to be open, to receive, to journey, to remember, to question, to make convenants. I wanted to try and get up close to it in this painting, to experience its truth and simplicity, to go back to the beginning when I first went to the fosse on the hillfort. I used to lie between the beech trees looking up at the distant heaven, through layer upon layer of cloud into the depths of my soul.  The covenant was made then, I think, with the person I want to remember.  It was around the time of the autumn equinox, and the mood of the piece is autumnal too – one is at the threshold of a new mode of being at such times and the dead petition us to remember them, to bring them back into the body, or so it seems. I have tried to do that with this painting – I don’t want him to be lost so perhaps I will believe that the universe is big enough to uphold his light somehow, and that my prayer can sustain him.

lutron

‘lutron’
mixed media on canvas with earth and ash
23×23 inches

“Release me from sin, my angel of grace,
I’ll give my word to your body, mark the earth with your space;
My heart under hills in the hidden light,
Has set the birds to dream your unlived life.”

This painting is about wanting to be released from sin through the process of redemption.  I had been working for over a year on this theme and originally the painting was part of a much larger, though less hopeful work.  That was about six months ago when I felt I had to put it aside for a while until I felt the change in myself, could approach these ideas with the new energy that comes from self-forgiveness.  Patrick Kavanagh refers to this need for transformation in his beautiful poem “canal bank walk”

For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

There came a week or two recently when something registered inside, and the conclusion came quite quickly.  It was only a momentary insight but was nevertheless a positive flow of energy.  I felt it through the landscape, through the heart and the body. It collected the lost and fragmented into a sanctuary, a temenos, to continue the process of reconciliation.

I think this is where past and future meet but in a place quite unlike the present moment because it is out of time.  Here the twin valleys of birth and death amount in the end to rebirth for all, and an agreement between two people and two modes of my thought.  The painting is of my body, both what was left of it after a tragedy (and the trace that was left behind in the landscape), but it’s future promise too – the point of view of the redemptive living thought as opposed to its mortal remains, its echo and its shell.

Perhaps the land registered the dance I made through the hills and valleys – a dance of survival, moving through grief and sin, and this is its memory of me, re-charged with a new outlook. It is, too, the rhythm of an angel that came into being from my experience and is now all that I can say for certain is profound and inviolate, true and unassailable.  I take hope from it. There is a music to be found after pain, and this is what I see – my answer to grief and sin, and that fragment of it that was heard by the universe.

There was once an epigraph on the painting, now hidden behind the layers, which I put together quickly and unconsciously from the few words I had available at the time. It is still relevant, I think: 

“across the body, around these points – arm, neck, shoulder – gathering the land you leave open, casing all markings / together along symbols on this circle remaining / turn under here, take back old pieces and body gathering, to ease and comfort the circle opening / to lengthen the man broken, the pattern corresponding / traced above hills, 21 pieces given, king leave open, solid, fullest, natural, good / off here – bring rain / on this – draw new lines, add casing, turn under him, gather this edge for opening / leave free together through the white centre, the margin falls away, pattern and material for casing, for this.”

Some closeups of the painting: