Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Back to nature
“No Separation” Oil on canvas Marianne Potterton 9th March 2009
Not feeling very wordy today!
Peace to all!
Growing and a Big Birthday!
Oil on canvas “Growing” Marianne Potterton February 2009
After a while of using pure pigments and enjoying how freeing it is to paint in a looser way with them I have brought this enjoyment back to the oil paints too. it looks quite different because it is a different material but it feels more fluid like the paintings I did with the pigments. In this painting the face is merging with the landscape as if it was growing out of it, like the flowers. Alan Watts describes the earth as peopling like an apple tree apples, that we grow and are not made.
I have just come back from three days of walking The Burren Way and back, I slept two nights in a tent, it was good to sleep on the earth and spend so much time outside in nature, I was also very happy to come back to my family and have a hot bath lovingly run for me. The Burren Way is a beautiful walk especially the tracks and paths where you can not see any houses from. Having walked the Camino de Santiago a few times, seeing the yellow or white arrows on a stone that was part of a style/seat, there were three of them on the way to Ballyvaughan, they were beautiful, thank you who ever made them for the walkers!
I had a wonderful Birthday yesterday, we ate mussels on Fanore beach and watched a beautiful sunset! I was able to take this amazing Birthday present of a Net Book from James to blog from the beach, or I could have written if I had not been having such a nice time! My old lap top was killed by an earwig! That is why I have not been writing recently, hopefully now I will be writing from lots of weird and wonderful places!
Words cant say everything!
There is an old cliche that says a picture tells a thousand words, I think a picture tells uncountable wordlessables! We think if there is not a word for it it does not exist, our world is tough and course when only described in words even when an exceedingly great writer tells the tail! Visual art can be much more subtle, and all encompassing, I love words but I think we relay too heavily on them and forget they cant say everything. When art has to be translated back into words and judged on the words that can be spoken about it I sat boo! What about art that makes us speechless but amazed? Art that makes part of us twitch that has not twitched before and stirs up something inside of us?
When I make art I hope to tap into the mystery so saying what I am trying to do stops the spontaneity, I can sort of write about it afterwards but only certain aspects, some of it I know little about, like I know little about how I pump by own blood or grow my own hair, but I do! My work/play explores some of the aspects of human nature and non human nature and where they collide. Our consciousness can alienate us from our connection to the rest of nature, our instincts have been over ridden by logic.
Slowly as we sleep the part of us that does not fit into society is lost, the man who wandered with his donkey and cart has vanished and there is now a clean, official tarmac loading bay for licensed vehicles only and a C.T.V. camera where he once slept!
Sanitized Life and tending the fire!
Small pieces of earth on the kitchen floor!
Old Christmas tree, coal, wood, turf, stone, leaves and dried grass
A little bit of outside inside!
For the last few days I have been tending a glowing fire. When the Children started to play with the contents of my tinder box, I thought what a lovely idea! It is miniature pieces of the earth, and full of energy. I left the little pieces of plastic in as a sad reminder of what we are doing to the planet that supports us. Life in this part of the world has become so sanitized; living at one with nature seems very remote. I do confess to being very speedy in sweeping up this lovely mess from the kitchen floor!
A fire really is the next best thing to the hot sun, now where is that heating oil lorry!!
All lit up on the Solstice!
“Solstice” indigo pigment, blue marjoram, poppy on canvas 21st December 2008
Detail
This painting is still wet and my hands are blue! I was thinking about the winter Solstice and Newgrange in Co. Meath, and the light coming into the darkness; merging of the sky and the earth and masculine and feminine, earthly and spiritual. I am really enjoying using the pigments I got in Marrakech, they feel so alive. I just mix them with water; so no smelly white spirits or turpentine! It feels more connected to my interventions and work in nature, I love all the so called accidents and unintentional marks it allows me to be very free while I work and tap into a more playful way of being!
Hope you all have a very Happy Winter Solstice
Peace to all
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