Monday, May 31, 2010

Iris Painting #1&2


Yesterday I painted the Irises, that we bought from the market.
Sometimes it is such a joy to paint flowers, to try
to capture their soul.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Painting: Distant Shore


Sometimes I feel a million miles away from myself,
as if looking back to shore from a drifting boat.

Painting: Reflected Rock

I sit here in the half light of the computer screen, unable to sleep. Pain is my constant companion these days. I try to look through the haze of this dark cloud that surrounds me, to look for the light, to find the beauty in anything....a lifeline to what I know, to what is certain....to what was certain.

...time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
T.S.Eliot

Friday, May 28, 2010

Thursday, May 27, 2010

BURNT NORTON
(No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')

T.S. Eliot
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say,
there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.



TIME LAPSE SKY IMAGERY:

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

New Painting:

Tomorrow is another day, a blank page on which to write
a new story, a canvas to be filled with the colours and dreams
of expectation.

Monday, May 24, 2010

New Painting:

With the fading of the light, I realize you have gone,
taken with the breeze, that cools the fire I feel inside.
A single star, shines through the darkness.
My memories are forever,
untouched by time.

New Painting:

Through the half light comes clarity,
emerging from the shadows of our mind.
A sliver of time when all is right, when all is calm and all is tranquil.
Slowly...sliding into the darkness of uncertainty and the unknown.

Notes on New Paintings:

For many years I have been interested in the concept of time, the passing of time, and how it can be represented in a visual context. I want to convey an atmospheric poetry of sorts, and capture a moment, a change in light and perception.

To quote someone near and dear to me, fellow artist, my niece Sarah said of the new works:

"...you show a kind of evolution of light - by that I mean the skyscapes are kind of like light at its most spectacular/expressive and then you zoom in/out to these moments in space where the light seems to be just being born.
They make me realise something about the relationship between light and time - I don't mean in the simple sense of the sun passing across the sky - but something else that I can't quite put my finger on but which is to do with this evolution of light."

It is a challenge that I am enjoying very much.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

New Painting:

With the fading light, echoing days end,
memories gain momentum and importance.
What once was, is no longer
and what is to come, is a mystery
and the sweetest of all seductions.

New Painting:



Saturday, May 22, 2010

New Painting:

A moment in time, when words fail.
The journey begins and we arrive without departing.

New Painting:

With heavy heart and leaden feet, I leave,
moving slowly away from the light, that is you.
Do not stir, stay as you are...
calm and eloquent in your stillness.

New Painting:






New Painting:



New Painting: