Swimming out of the dark
We don't talk about it now, do we?
I wonder what you see or feel when you look at this image. It came, like most of my images, without any conscious intention, other than wanting to play around randomly with a new material ground. But, like the images I talked about last week in my post about the pandemic, when I look at this now, I see things.
What was the pandemic like for you? Do you ever think about it? Does it still affect you to this day? Do you talk about it to anyone? Maybe this is just a personal view, but it feels to me like an unspoken cultural sore, which I imagine to still be festering below the surface of our apparent return to normality.
I had fewer opens and views for my article last week. This doesn’t concern me in terms of measuring levels of engagement; that goes up and down for reasons that don’t interest me because that’s not why I’m here. But I’m wondering if people passed on a little more quickly than usual, because they didn’t want to stir up the memories that might have been suggested by that bare-faced title and the reference to caves.
The image I’ve opened with came as part of another attempt to find out if I could find a way to work with canvas. I wanted to see if I could take my line off paper, so that I would have the freedom to wash and layer paint without the paper starting to disintegrate.
I cut up tiny pieces of primed and unprimed canvas, leaving their frayed edges, and started to improvise.
I started with my two companions from prehistoric times, who for some reason placed themselves within a sticky plasma that joined them to the earth, some rocks, a few discarded Venetian masks, and a bird. Everything was contained within the strange cellular material, which felt like a connecting web that was holding everything together in those extraordinary times. We were slightly underground, perhaps partially buried, being pulled down amongst the stones and the soil. Though I was supposed to be experimenting with layers and being brave, this little scene arrested me right at the first pass, and I could never bring myself to put any more paint onto it.
The line bled. I missed the way that paper soaked up my thin paint, keeping it in place, and giving me brushmarks and edges. Now the paint was hazy, diffuse, annoyingly undefined.
Over time, I gradually became curious about the new atmosphere, though it frustrated my habits.
The strange enveloping plasma continued, and slowly more artefacts appeared. There were very few references to actual humans. The artefacts seemed to be standing in for humans as they had been before this apocalypse; making things, trying to understand and control huge natural forces that were beyond their understanding. Now the humans were gone, leaving behind little bits and pieces of what used to be called culture. All that remained was the cellular material of life itself, stretching between these discarded creations and soil, plants and birds.
I didn’t believe that Covid-19 was going to wipe us out, but the pandemic brought me up close to an overwhelming sense of human density and relentless environmental destruction.
There was one image that did have a human in it. Sitting in a yogic posture, perhaps echoing the Pashupati seal from pre-literary India (before 2,000 BCE), the human is enveloped in a bubble of the viscous plasma, which is apparently protecting them. They seem curious, aware that they too are made of this stuff, picking up and inspecting the filaments that are coming out of them, connecting to everything around them.
At the end of the year, the image below appeared. I hadn’t been painting for months and was happy when it arrived. It turned out to be a story of the year, though that wasn’t the plan.
At the beginning of the year, a grounded Indian dancer stands, straight and firm, in a dark blue room. The room has a single window to the outside; she’s looking straight at the viewer. Her scarf is blowing up behind her, ending in a hand pointing the way forward. An ochre hand is waving, or is it drowning, at her feet. Then there’s a period of strange discombobulation. A large bird flaps its wings in a darker blue sky. Beneath it, an artfully fragmented face, sightless eyes, and then another face, enlarged, above a standing harlequin body; reduced, stationary, but grounded, a cat nearby. A hairy fish swims towards another face, large now, one eye shuttered, but beginning to light up with an ochre dawn. Finally a swimmer emerges, triumphant, her goggles a pair of glasses; making a splash as she soars into life against a backdrop of golden horizon. The ochre hand celebrates with her.
That was my pandemic year, which did, in fact, end with me finally swimming in the sea outside my door.
I love sharing your journeys. Thank you for sharing them ❤️🔥
And finally, the sea …………