Seascapes

Inspired by the daily blog of an artist who sets himself the task of publishing a study or finished painting every day, I thought I could try and commit to one or two pieces a week. So, here goes. Here are the first two which were completed yesterday. The idea behind both is the sea (which may or may not be obvious) and as I was reflecting on the brush strokes and movement on the canvas, the old story of Moses parting the waters came to mind. It made me think about inspiration and how sometimes the source(s) of inspiration is clear and obvious and other times it is hidden and part of the process of being creative is uncovering the inspiration. All of this makes the creative effort an exciting exploration often leading to a form of discovery. Painting and drawing is my meditation, an exploration and a retuning of sounds and sentiments ... and clearly of movement and colour as well. Although I'll continue practising, I think ... :O)

Seascapes

This is inspired partly by Moses parting the waters and partly by some of the stunning images from Wolfgang Petersen's 'The Perfect Storm' - the wall of water. When I look at the original, which will live in my living room for a few days while I study it and prepare for the next piece, the word 'wall' keeps cropping up. While I was painting it I was thinking about the light and where the light is coming from in the painting - the top right hand corner - and how it is almost as if the darker colours are being soaked up into the light. That is a powerful metaphor for things going on elsewhere at the moment, so I am happy with that reflection for now.

Thoughts

Thoughts that come
like the breeze and
Shake me.

George Eliot/MBJ (19.1.1997)

Dover Beach

By Matthew Arnold (1851)

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Sketches from the beach (Aug. 2009)

In perpetuity

Something stirs in the grass
And ripples through the yellow wheat fields.

Weighed down with salt scented spices from the sea,
The west wind rides the lazy sun shine East.

Waves of heat blur the line on the horizon,
Obscuring the view of the houses in the distance.

On the line, the washing dries, quickly;
Motley flags waving him on his way,
A patchwork of nationalities, t-shirts
And socks, black and white and grey.

Wieldy white windmills towering gracefully nearby,
Greet the wind on his course eastward,
Performing their vertical three-armed pirouettes
Humming a low frequency love song into the air stream.


2009@MBJ

A Thousand Lines

(Contemplating an ink sketch of a tree)

I love the way one line
Runs into another.
The interconnectedness of
a thousand black ink lines on paper
Reminds me of people –
of everyone I ever knew
Or met, or saw for a brief moment:
A passenger on the bus in Aarhus,
Someone waiting at London Stansted,
A driver in another car on the M5,
A man reading a newspaper in a pub in Kerry,
The lady in the train kiosk at Struer Railway station,
Classmates, all teachers – a teacher.

An old lady who once taught me
how to read music and
the most precious gift of smiling –
‘bringing sun shine into a room’.
Defining self against oneself
or despite oneself.
Sun shine and smiles,
and beautifully old, wrinkled hands,
stocky built after many generations of farming and labour,
but at 80 years old playing Mozart and Chopin, arthritically,
and Kuhlau, drawing out those amazing sounds
from the black grand piano
taking up the whole of the bungalow living room,
like the music, taking up a whole life –
A long life,
her skin defined by a thousand delicate lines,
happy smiling lines
criss-crossing her cheeks and chin, and
giving her an even more ancient and wise appearance.
A long life which had been in touch with so many lives before mine,
spreading sunshine and smiles,
teaching music and laughter.

(2007/2009)

@MBJ