PART 2 STUDIO WORK – post 2
The garden in mid-summer is in full performance mode and each morning the ‘dance’ begins!
7.00 am…
Stillness
Waiting…
Not a breath
Birds murmuring
Gently echo in the air.
Far off the motorway hums its relentless sound of other worlds.
But here, in the garden, the other waits…
Summer’s glorious moment is suspended
Waiting for that first shaft of sunlight which brings on the dance-
Colour, light and the joy of another day.
The first moment of light hovers over the honeysuckle
And the perfume is there.
A gap in the branches
And the sun’s strength pierces the dark,
Sending its promise over the tops of green.
The day’s warmth is suspended there…
Slowly, slowly begins the dance
But
Still there is silence …
Waiting! Waiting!
The response to the moment often comes first in words, then the image happens something like a performance, absorbing the atmosphere and allowing the mark making to reflect the moment. In my research, I’ve been reading ‘Ways of Drawing’ and found the essay written by Julian Bell in the chapter ‘Open Space’, interesting and relevant to my present exploration. He is talking specifically about the ‘hand-held image’ referring to the small sketchbook recording experience on a drawing walk. He writes, “Don’t try to draw a picture. You are collecting traces. Your pencil marks should respond to the sounds and rhythms you encounter as you move along the street…”
I’ve been building this into my image making, questioning a more expansive sense of ‘listening’ to the natural world. I’m questioning the concept of isolating one sense to the exclusion of the other senses. Further research, in the book ‘The Spell of the Sensuous’ by David Abram, he describes the response to the raven’s loud, guttural cry, with very specific analysis, “…it echoes through the visible, immediately animating the visible landscape with the reckless style or mood proper to that jet black shape. My various senses…coherently converge…in the perceived thing, just as the separate perspectives of my two eyes converge upon the raven and convene there into a single focus. My senses connect up with each other in the things I perceive, or rather each perceived thing gathers my senses together in a coherent way and it is this that enables me to experience the thing itself as a centre of forces…as an Other.” (page 62)
Exploring this idea of the senses “coherently converging” in embracing the natural world is allowing me to bring other elements into the images, including the written word…
As the birdsong fades
I hear another of nature’s music fill the space
Colour!
The sounds of red, orange, yellow, deep red
Thrust themselves into the space
With such urgency…
I just step back in awe!
These images in the sketchbook are responses to the sound of colour in the garden. I want to allow colour ‘to have its head’ along with language and so I’m experimenting here with the inclusion of words – very tentative because I’m not sure about this aspect yet. I don’t want language to dominate