Happy Spring equinox ..
The sky is filled with light today and the garden full of bees and butterflies, It’s joyous. Seasons and turning of them feels more miraculous each year and Spring will always be hope. Rebirth and renewal can sometimes exacerbate loss as it marks the passing of time and I do usually feel a sadness just before the surge of new life.
I’ve talked here before about how nature was magnified for me after M died. It felt blinding, had prismic intensity, it shimmered with fast moving cellular magnificance. March is fertlity and I felt the pain of loss very deeply the first spring after the suicide. MIke’s absence was tangible on our untended allotments, through the new grass he would have kept short. The packets of seeds on the windowsill went unplanted and the weeds grew wild, I couldn’t step in and be him as it would mean he had actually gone. Eventually I let myself slip back in love with the outdoors and now it’s my complete solace. It’s freedom and that need for freedom spills over into every part of my practise ..
Below is the beautiful order of service designed by my brother for M’s funeral with his love for digging the earth apparent.
Freedom from restrictions..
Freedom sought in nature is not dissimilar to how my work is developing and each time I go to the studio I feel less connection to anything that stops the freedom. Frames, edges that need to be straight, edges in themselves, the weighty history of representation, outlines, rules etc… The square and rectangular format of canvases feels constraining and I want the work to live outside of those tight formats. Maybe I’m going 3D !
My gallery visited last week to choose works for the show and we talked about the moulded edges of some of my canvases. These are my favourite works in fact. I always stretch my own substrates and, rather than tucking and pinning the fabric round the back of the frame, I scrunched it in my hands as the hot glue was drying. This gave it life and movement, radically untidy and happier for it. These moulded and folded sculptural edges became an important part of the finished paintings. Allowing for extensions of marks, hidden paint places and the feeling that the work might dislodge from its base entirely and become something else (become free). Pics below;
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