Art and Worship

On Saturday and Sunday G took me to Dunham Massey and to Westonbirt in search of some Autumn colour. Comparing the photographs I took this year with last its pretty obvious that this October is much less colourful than 2008. That didn't stop me from filling my SD card with lots of autumnal images however, especially at Westonbirt, where the trees seemed in danger of being outnumbered by dogs and people.


Some people seemed much less respectful of the trees than the dogs though, I saw at least 3 grown men plucking leaves from the beautiful Japanese Maples. Their beauty is fragile enough without us helping them along (helping nature to its grave seems to be a particular human pastime).


Then again, it's the fragility of this autumnal beauty that gives it a deeper resonance, and makes it, like all rare things, all the more precious and poingnant. The last few leaves clinging to the branches are the saddest and the sweetest.



I took a few treasures home with me from Westonbirt and Dunham Massey (all windfalls, of course), including these chestnuts and their pods, which I've been drawing. I love Dunham Massey, I've been there 3 times and always at this time of the year. There's a magical atmosphere particularly in the deer park where the deer seem to have remarkable patience with us interlopers. One fine stag was being very patient on Saturday, lying in the frail late afternoon sunshine surrounding by photographers. They crept towards him, crouched down in the bracken as if they were making an act of supplication. Maybe we haven't progressed so far since the days when cave men recreated the images of deer and bison on the walls of their caves.

ROOTS

I often wonder why I go through these periods of being more visual, then cycling back again to writing again? In the past, when I was relatively guilt free, it was easier to free-wheel these periods of creative flux. Now that I am increasingly aware of time’s elastic growing taut I worry at my own lack of sticking power.

I wonder if some frenzied, over stimulated part of my brain simply wants a rest? I imagine it steaming away like a broken television (of the old cathode ray variety), while another rested area of the brain takes over for a while. I generally feel less emotional, more reflective and neutral when I draw. I can listen to talk radio, music, songs, words, I can listen to conversation, I feel generally more happy when I’m doing something visual than when I’m writing, then I need silence; I’m tense, fraught, the slightest noise winds me up (though noise in general, other people’s noise, tends to wind me up). I guess it must be those opposing halves of the brain having a different effect on my behaviour.

On Sunday afternoon and evening I enjoyed giving into this impulse to draw. While listening to the Cricket I worked on my pen and ink drawing, and then I drew a little outside. At the top of our garden, where the shed and garage used to be is a raised platform of grey and brittle concrete. Dad dismantled both shed and garage about 20 years ago, when he made the garden gates. I remember how we found a family of dead rats crushed beneath the shed after it had fallen, their feet sticking out from under the rubble, perfectly clean and pink, like victims of a bomb blast.

A few years ago the people who own the houses that were built (again, about 20 years ago) at the bottom of our garden planted conifers up against the dividing fence. These have grown and now their roots are breaking up our concrete. Weeds and grass spurt up in the cracks, eroding the concrete even further. It’s annoying, but also the textures of the aging, mossy, slowly decomposing concrete has its beauty. I enjoyed making a few small drawings of them and the old flower pots that have become abandoned up there over the years, where only dandelions and weeds flourish.

The roots edging their way into our garden, crumbling the edges, seems an oddly appropriate metaphor. Thoughts too have their way of impinging on peace of mind (the territory of composure). It’s difficult to fend off these subtle intrusions. Perhaps the best medicine for my fretting and anxiety is simply to draw or write the blues away.

Perfectible...

Art (drawing, painting) was a huge part of my early life. I have a degree in Graphic Design (specialised in illustration) from the then City of Birmingham Polytechnic, but I always wrote as well, and this has been the form my creativity has taken over the years.

From time to time I get the urge to do something visual though, often it's tied into the seasonal creativity thing - i.e. at certain times of the year I get specific creative urges, the times when I'm most likely to have the visual urge is spring, and autumn. The obvious reason for this being that simply, I love the transitional seasons - right now I love trees in a blaze of colour, and the strange fungi that are bursting through the mulch of leaves and moss and fallen seeds, nuts and seed pods, these natural phenomenom I find so inspiring. Mostly lately I appease my urge to capture something visually (to capture the moment, to understand something about my own interaction with the world, a childlike interaction that I hope I will never lose) by digital photography. I feel guilty though that I allow my artistic skills, mostly drawing, to atrophy, though the main reason for this is a practical one - there simply isn't the time to do EVERYTHING, to write poetry, to write fiction, to slog at getting these published (to deal with the failure when I don't - dealing with failure is EXTREMELY time consuming) and to express myself visually as well.

I tend to work visually off and on, exhibiting occasionally, mostly at one of the annual RBSA open exhibitions. Still, I'm aware at the moment that I need to pack my life with creativity in order to keep my 'spark' going, and this blog is part of my strategy of doing this.

I'll explain, later...