Author: bsefran

Blue Scribble

I often find it difficult to pick one title for a picture, or for anything, actually! This one, an abstract, had three potential titles: Ups and Downs, Water Patterns, Dancing reflections. It ended up as Blue Scribble!

One thing I realised during the B’s Bits Covid project was that everyone reads different things into pictures, poems etc. Sometimes, it is what I had intended but did not mention and sometimes they are things which I did not see until they were pointed out to me.

The Wings of the Morning

The Wings of the Morning. From Psalm 139

Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?
Or wither shall I flee from Thy Presence?
If I take the WINGS of the MORNING
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea
Even there shall Thy hand lead me
And Thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say surely the darkness shall cover me
Then the night shall be light about me.

I made this painting long ago, during a year when I was a librarian for a year in a theological college. A personal G*d, whom one would address as Thou, is not part of my spiritual imagination, yet some of the Psalms resonate with me, as do these (selected) lines from Psalm 139. They also remind me of the second and last verses of one of my old-favorite poems, by Yeats:

The LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
-William Butler Yeats

Sometimes when anxiety, or fear these Covid days, threaten to take over, I can reach down to “my deep heart’s core” and know that I do have some peace there, even if sometimes, “peace comes dropping slow” ! And even in “the uttermost parts of the sea” with darkness covering me, I will have some Light there, and Peace there, in my deep heart’s core, by whatever name one wishes to call it.

To anyone who has to fly to the uttermost parts, through illness or other circumstances: may you be blessed with Peace.

Sunflower and mandalas

From the Sunflower series: Blue Sunflower.

This is part of a small series of sunflower pictures made from photos of sunflowers, mostly in the community garden where I had a plot. Sunflowers are another of my favorite plants and the seedhead in the centre (one of nature’s patterns) together with the surrounding petals, makes something like a mandala.

At the back of each sunflower in the series are two circles containing cultural, religious or universal circular patterns, in this case a star and a maze.

Tangled Garden : Robin

Robin . From The Tangled Garden Series

I made The Tangled Garden Series as a reminder of the black and white illustrations in the children’s and botanical books of my childhood, and in some Japanese prints.

Apart from the fact that I love plants and many animals, what especially interests me is their patterns, which are brought out better in black and white such as the Branching Pattern of leaf veins and branching of tree-branches

These are not straight B/W photos, but originally coloured ones, which I have worked on “by hand” so to speak, not just using pre-made filters, to produce the effect which I wanted. Time-consuming!