here are two small abstract paintings on paper from the series now known as chromatids (derived from colour, identity and dna)… there are one hundred of these and i do not think these two particular paintings have had a public viewing before (they can also be viewed ‘actual size’ here)…
LXIII and XLVII, mixed media painting on paper, 15cm x 15cm
striations, as it turned out, were the most direct, uncomplicated means of exploring elemental colours and textures on a very small scale – they also began to be about developing a narrative within the process, of texture & surface and how the colours related and interacted within the ragged, irregular edges of the paper – the pattern of striations echoed what i had observed in the rural environment, scenes composed of the weathered, worn surfaces & rough edges that most appealed to me visually. these close-up, abstract photographs were all taken in early 2008, shortly after being given a new camera to play with…
recalling again how this series of one hundred paintings first came about (it was a dull, drizzly day in early november 2008) has caused me once more to muse upon the japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, an appreciation of the understated, the transient, ephemeral or imperfect. for myself, understanding the aesthetic or philosophy of wabi sabi, it seems to first arise within, in a sensing, a feeling, an intuition or an awareness, that momentarily surrenders up the ego in reverence for the object or scene, that acknowledges the relevance of time or location upon it, and that it can be experienced any time or anywhere if one is mindful enough to see it…
there is definitely something in wabi sabi that speaks very much about my own artistic inspiration, something that i can trace right back to my mixed media collages, but i am not sure one can faithfully make an artform of it, for wabi sabi is what it is…
in early 2005 i had sketched out a mindmap about the the perception of the landscape and the environment, in which transience, impermanence, stillness and the effects of time surfaced as major keywords. much later, in september 2007, i once again found myself contemplating where i was headed within the environmental nature of my art – and i was reminded of things that are discarded or rejected, that situations do and will change, that nothing is permanent. i had also briefly referred to solitude a couple of months earlier and the importance of time in the making of my art.
i didn’t write anything in this journal for a few months, except for the posting of some photographs of a painting that i had completed, a painting appropriately entitled shrede (an archaic spelling of ’shred’), implying a slow scraping back or paring down of layers, and what remains, tattered, torn and fragmented. the outward signs of impermanence and an inner sense of solitude eventually led on to a very meandering, philosophical path eastwards, towards all things quiet, gentle, calm and ultimately zen, one that made me realise that an awareness of situations or things could actually mean something much more than the sum of their parts – it did not need a name, but it offered up some new interpretations…
…
over the last week a few hours have been spent out in the garden, on some required ‘tidying-up tasks’, pruning back overgrown hedges and shrubs, fixing up fences (there is always more work to do, it seems). back in the summer i took these two photographs of a blackbird’s nest that i had discovered in one hedge, images which i later accidentally erased (hence the previous post on rescuing deleted images from a camera) but i have found them again, safe and well…
[a blackbird's nest, 18 july 2010]
the same two blackbirds that i had observed nesting in a tangle of clematis earlier in the spring had made a new nest in a different location – just a small incident of nature quietly at work…
[baby blackbirds, 25 july 2010]
in this autumn clear-up i have subsequently discovered many more birds nests of varying sizes and designs, suggesting that the parts of the garden which were left the most undisturbed had become something of a sanctuary to nature… but i did wonder if any of the garden birds would be returning to use these nests again in the spring; i found the answer to whether birds do or don’t reuse their nests on the RSPB website…
yesterday, i spied this intricate slug drawing on a leaf…
does this exude a little of the wabi sabi aesthetic? it is part of the boundary fencing that my neighbour had put up a few years ago (sans chamber pot, of course) – i rather like it, even though it is far from perfect…
