Category: ART METHODS

Rumi Quote

Quote from Jalaluddin Rumi : “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

This quote from one of Rumi’s most-loved  poems can be interpreted in many different ways.

Here is one interpretation which I like: 

“Fundamentally for me this is a lyrical invitation to discover your true calling (“the beauty we love”) and express that authentically in the world (“be what we do”)….The extension of the invitation is to embrace the permission to release the “should” and follow the golden thread of what truly makes you feel alive. (Julia McCutcheon)”

This was a card which I made long ago for a friend who was taking a huge step in his life to follow his heart. It is made from a rubbing over real plants. The fern is my favourite plant and a very ancient one.  Ferns were found in fossils 360 million years ago, but most around today did not appear until 145   million years ago!

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!

In remembrance of places which no longer exist

Have you ever gone back, many years later, to visit a building where you once lived, or simply a place which you loved, perhaps as a child, or in your travels, only to find it has been demolished and you never knew?

Whenever you thought about it, maybe even decades after you left, it never occurred to you that maybe it no longer existed?

And people…. it’s a bit of a shock sometimes to find out, perhaps from an old friend, that someone you lost touch with over the years, maybe someone you went to school with or worked with, has been dead for many years, but if you thought of them, you imagined them going on just as they were in those days.

Such an experience really brings home the knowledge that the pictures we hold onto, in our minds, of people and places (or events) may be very much our own imagination and not fact!

Why-Why

This is a kind of digital “collage” of seven or more pieces, created by rubbing crayon over parts of various objects in my home, objects from my travels or family things. Each piece of paper on which a pattern appears is then saturated with water-colours around the crayon, and the whole thing assembled as a collage, sometimes physically, but in this case, digitally!

Why-why refers to Y-Y, the Ying Yang symbol in the centre! 🙂

Every exit is also an entrance

Every exit is also an entrance. From the City Called Life series

The saying, “When one door closes, another opens”, a similar way of putting it, often refers to stages of life, jobs, retirement, relationships, moving homes etc. Now in this Covid time, as so many of our usual “doors” are closed to us, we are, of necessity, learning to find new ways to satisfy our human needs.

I made this picture, a long time ago, of the entrance/exit of a nearby shopping mall, just as it was closing for the night. It is made from a juxtaposition of two photos, one of people entering, one of people exiting. Now I am reminded of that saying any time I go there!

Abstract. Red.

Here’s an abstract which I originally called “Red Square.” . . . until it dawned on me that perhaps that was not a good name since it might be taken as meaning a place of that name in Russia, so then I called it “Message”. . . until it dawned on me that people might ask what the message was! And I had no message about this one ; it’s just an abstract!

No two people looking at someone or something will be seeing quite the same thing, nor all the history behind the person or object they think they are seeing.

If there’s a “message” in this, it is: “As in art, so in life.” We all look at everything through our own personal “filters”: our own darkness, light, sharpness etc, and through our own life histories.

We name what we see, sometimes automatically without thought (red square!). Sometimes our naming is learnt, sometimes we just don’t know what to call that which we see or experience. But every thing and person holds so much more than is obvious at first sight. We know that, but sometimes we forget it.

You can find more about the technique, one of my main methods, and to see what this was made from, go to Art Methods.

Soundings

“To take soundings” means, amongst other things, to drop a line down into the depths, to find out what is down there, below the surface, measuring how deep down the line will go.

In these Covid times, where very little is “normal”, we have been forced, willy nilly, to take stock of our situations and face ourselves to a degree which we may have rarely had to do before. In this pandemic, with mega-uncertainty about most things, with outcomes depending on many factors beyond our control and constantly having to make choices whether to do this or that without sufficient information, we are called on to look very deeply into ourselves, to “take soundings” to find out what is really important to us
and each in our own way, to find in these depths the resources to cope with it all. All this as horrors play out on the world stage.

And then there’s the lesser problems! We are learning that there is more than one way to do many things, work, shop, meet etc. Like most of us who are single and have no family in town, it’s not just that social isolation itself is a problem for me, but also the lack of connection and touch with “real”people.

Then today I remembered a poem which I used to keep pinned up on a bulletin board. The board has gone now but I still hold the poem in my heart. For when I need it!

IN ALL WEATHERS

only this is necessary
in rain or sun:
to follow step with step
and know the ground.
to reach out your hand,
or touch with eyes, or with the heart.
to praise, in gratitude and wonder, praise
the budding, blooming, withering worlds.
to see the forests and the trees
to etch no lines.
to weave yourself a garment or maybe even wings
with all your gathered threads
from questions, loves and wonderings,
a garment ending in a fringe
where Self or One, no question now, only depends
on where and why and and how you need to look
this moment.
here.
and in the end
to sit, or lie, or walk, or stand
open, breath by breath
hearing the one song pulse through all
the summing, sighing, shimmering, sounds.
or just to be
in silence
and to know
no whether.