A GAELIC MARKET.

On Saturday, July 26, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

I could say 'Irish', but that's an English word.

But then, so is 'Gaelic'. Margadh Gaeilge, a Gaelic market.

Between a lapping seagull sparkled harbour and high green backdrop hill, ant people are mingling on dry stone, drawn to converge and pause under canopies, fluttering flags, banners and balloons. Corralled by a foursquare continuous convoy of creeping buglike metallic conveyances. Being a pattern repeating over solar centuries every seven days.

A brief breezeblown pause among high cumulus clusters in the blue void, before zooming in through veils and vapours.

While, on the ground, diversity flashes kaleidoscopically into vivid focus. Market day, and a fine sunny day in July.

We are out in force, with a thousand conversations occurring simultaneously, and all unpremeditated. Nobody knew what they were about to say, or what they might hear or see. All happening organically in flawless spontaneity. All in a timeless continuum of a bright breeze off the sea.

From a hawk high vision of surrounding folds and hollows in the blanket of the rural psyche, pinpointing strewn remnants of generations.

Grainy monochrome glimpses of farmers' markets frozen in photographic moments long past.

Drawn to mingle and gather on a wide square of dung-dotted stony ground. Long lines of parked pony and trap, donkey carts against an austere backdrop of barracks and mills.

Milling crowds in black suits, overcoats and hats, the women long frocked and veiled or wrapped in shawls. Patient ponies parked, breeding cattle corralled in clusters, straggling children, and barking dogs, prize ponies and caged ducks, cocks, and chickens. The same tarpaulin tents and fluttering flags, frozen outside time.

In dormant provincial decay, hounded by the holy of holies and shackled by the angelus.

Wrapped in grey newspaper headlines of the smoke of war and sagas of uprising.

Why get stuck there, forever bandaging the wound? Go deeper, beyond the rudiments of industry and servitude, and ask a Druid. Echoes of Tara awakening and the 'real' fall of Rome revisited.

Because this time all the cats are out of the bag, and it's a different kettle of fish and the cows are coming home to roost.

So in case you wonder about all this fluttering of flags and what it reminds you of that you can't quite put your finger on. This forever urge to gather the stray living strands from the relics of dust and doctrine. Connecting the dots all the way to a nexus of upsurge and true tribal revival.

 

 

The peoples' market, a multifarious diversity of banter and barter, balloons, and local colour,

and practical produce, in the face of uniformity and plastic trash, is really a give-away.

Whether you trade with sea shells or minted metal discs and printed paper promises, it's a coming together in synch with the tides and seasons of freedom and fortune. A primitive prototype of all that's fair, marketing the surviving vestiges of community.

Rudimentary it may be. But there's enough there, local food, clothes, crafts, and tools, to expand a network of local currency. When the big giants crash, we still have a shared link to renewed evolution outside the mechanistic matrix. Practicalities are the prerogative of 'people', not patriarchs.

Instead of fake progress, things we don't actually 'need', which only serve to enslave in debt, 'a faith worse than debt.' Return to bonding with the folds and features of the land

and natural untainted food growing no matter how small the scale. If everyone grew food and the fields were full, abundance would be free.

Regional, local, evolving again. Wiser than when we were unwittingly outwitted, wandering from the way. What more can i say? Just a few glimpses of market day.

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~

Makes Rainbows.~

A FERTILE CIRCLE.

On Friday, July 25, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

'G.M.O. = Grow My Own,'

Hilltop backyards in a warm wave of sudden sunny summer abundance. Rows of crows on roof ridges and chimneypots shift places and swoop over to the sunny side between unpainted stucco backyard walls.

A patchwork of fences, hedges, and washing-lines like an allotment of enclosures painted by Van Gogh. Makeshift sheds, purple drooping buddleia where red admirals flit, settle, and suck, among the arcing heady scented blooms.

Dog barks, child shrieks, hedge strimmers, power tools, and distant strains of outdated music. Seagulls sail in slow spirals high on warm blue air.

With an aerial view of rectangles in rows, and pastel painted diminishing fractals of gable ends. Four side roads ending in allotments and wild yellow iris in deep shade just before the tideline.

Some cycles of seasons ago, clipping a central patch in the long grass, i lay down, squinting into a high sun's hot prismatic glare, contemplating a future garden.

Till, with two sharp sticks and a length of twine

one staking exact centre and with the other describing a perfect twelve foot circle in the cropped grass. A definitive statement in a long untended square grown wild and crowned with a tall crop of waving green.

Taking a straight spade as a cookie cutter, turning the first turf clods outwards from the ring. Matted grass rootstuff, stones, plastic, and shards of glass. A single rose briar stem in the grass. Levering and hauling a buried bulky boulder with a squelch and suck from the wet clay. To be a standing stone, upright like a canine tooth.

But don't forget the magic in a circle. The primal definition of form and field. "With this stick, i make a mark in the soil." Serving the soil with affection in abundance.

Concentric to the four corners, ripples in a pool, and what i did, defies the grid. Seasonally cyclic as a crop circle.

Subsequently slogging the sluggish sods of soil, purging all inorganic relics of rust and bottle tops, degrading plastic and tangles of wire. Separating the wheat from the trash.

The primal form emerging, as in the painting, ANCIENT SYMBOL. Not to mention a mountain of meticulous mandalas of sacred geometry, the east, the south, the west, and the north. Incense, sticks and stones, driftwood off the beach. Chopping and filtering the soil for cultivation, but also really just playing with shapes.

Well, a garden's a painting whichever way you look at it. In that sense, imagining it from above like a canvas. Green brown pattern on the patchwork ground. A circle emerging down below among the grid of parallel rectangles. Serving as a compass and a sundial mound.

Till now, in a sultry shade of a breeze through the flavour of yellow, rustling the willow, the softened ground round the moated mound, and a garden full of diverse large green leaves.

People now reading G.M.O. as, 'Grow My Own', or even 'Go More Organic' and guerilla planting in the steets. In small country towns, planting in any available plot, outside the Bank, the Post Office, the Office Block, the Parking Lot, and all along the towpath by the canal. Spreading from town to town, 'FOOD IS FREE.'

Tend the rambling diversity at leisure and take what you need for free. In the name of intentional pure abundance, and community. It's happening now and that's the way to go, to reap the harvest of the hedgerow.

I pronounce a FERTILE CIRCLE grown to fruition, untainted, wholesome, and unbroken.

It grew all by itself.

It's an earth relief replica of an ANCIENT SYMBOL. The womb of the Mother Goddess.

The same symbol still used today on electronic devices as the 'POWER ON/OFF' sign.

Occurring too in numerous unaccountable crop circles, softly on the wisdom body of the generously ever rebirthing Earth.

The switch from striving, to thriving. From decay and decline, to new rebirth.

>><< >><< >><<

Makes Rainbows<

A LIQUID MIRROR, (Process of a painting.)

On Sunday, July 20, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

'One showing is worth a thousand words.'

~ Zen saying.

I just now completed a painting, titled A LIQUID MIRROR. It took around four days, in five hour sessions on average. I work at a snail's pace, as the process requires full attention to subtle exactness. There is nothing dramatic or emotional about it. It's a form of meditation.

At this stage, i am familiar with my method as to rarely encounter an obstacle that i can't resolve. To say i learned the hard way is an understatement. Probably the best way to learn.

The worst thing you can do is give up. No chance of that though, as it's my preferred kind of challenge, endlessly interesting. To abandon creativity is to embrace self defeat.

Never lie down on the battlefield or your spirit may abandon you. But it's an increasingly peaceful battle, no blood, no sweat, no tears, at all.

That being so, instead of capitalizing on it, (you can't put a price on intrinsic worth) i intend to share all of it. I keep the painting, you gain rare insight into how to do it yourself.

A gift is something shared, why bring commerce into it ?

The measure of art is not how quickly you can part with it in exchange for 'paper.' Or how much paper you can get. Anyway why be in a rush to part with the embodiment of your spirit's pleasure ? You're welcome to a print of it for free. A fractal of the source with essence intact.

So now i will give you a magic medicine. A distillation of what's going on here, complete with images, so you can see the process in progress. There's no loss in simplifying, on the contrary. Because descriptions always seem more complex than the action itself, till you get it.

I'm sharing dependable practical principles of procedure here. Along with feeling, so forget 'technique'. There is no technique, it's not a trick, or a knack, and you won't get far with only a mere technique. Technique is for people whose feeling is not involved, and active expression is intuitive feeling in action. So...

THE THREE BASIC COMPONENTS.

1. ~ CONTOUR OUTLINE.
2. ~ SHADOW AREAS.
3. ~ COLOUR/TEXTURE.

Image number one, CONTOUR OUTLINE.

Simply the visible boundaries of form. What we tend to call, 'things.' When we refer to 'things', we're just pointing out portions of the whole and giving them a name. No 'thing' was ever separate in reality because no one thing ever existed in isolation, being merely a concept based on exclusion, or to be exact, ignoring.

Apparent visible boundaries always have their own uniquely distinct character. That's an important word. This is what line delineates; the distinguishing characteristics. Without specifics there's no character, only vague generalization.

Trees differ from clouds, or rocks, or creatures,

but all coexist together in exact relationship, 'by virtue of one/another', both visually and actually.

So, in drawing a line, be sure it typifies the thing depicted. This entails a lot of looking without inner distraction. Just seeing, without undue effort to 'look.' Attention is present by itself, unless we think 'about' it. It's simply truth to present experience. Composition is seeing where it is, in balanced relation with everything else.

Unpracticed people are unable to depict what they see, without something to refer to directly. For example, how does an ash differ from an oak, or a cauliflower? I remember a teacher in school saying; "And don't make your trees look like glorified cabbages !" Now there's an idea, though it wasn't wasted on me, already engaged in turning over a new leaf.

So if you're drawing directly from what you're seeing, 'one look equals one line.' You can always erase it and correct it. That's the opposite of a mistake, we learn by correcting mis-takes. I'll draw the line there and go into the shadows.

Image number two: SHADOW AREAS.

William Blake is said to have said: "It's not so much the colour as where the dark areas are put." (Approximate quote.) Shadow areas follow contours, literally, as well as chronologically.

When you fill in the shadow areas you already have the emergence of form and volume. It's a nice way to start, as you already feel you're making progress. A procedure is helpful because it helps you to know how to proceed.

Shadows are a deeper tone of the colour of the substance on which they fall. So if you're starting with the shadows within foliage it's a darker green, (mix a tiny touch of black with green. Or even its opposite, violet, tentatively as that's a strong pigment, and opposite colours neutralize one another.)

If it's autumn, or rocks, or earth, dark brown is always a good foundation for shadows and shadow pockets within contours.

You'll see what it looks like in the photo. It's a nice feeling filling in the shadows. Now you already have contrast and depth, the yin and the yang. The polar parameters of wholeness.

So you can take a tea break or whatever, comfortable in the knowledge all is in order.

Image number three: COLOUR/TEXTURE.

I include colour and texture together as they're obviously not two things usually. At least in nature they occur together. Colour is the most luscious stage, as you're working with frequencies of feeling, like when the bare bones and structures bloom and blossom like flowers in summer.

I'm well aware it's possible to paint using only colour, having explored many diverse avenues.

What i'm presenting here is an all purpose practical simplification of the elements of drawing and painting combined. Just one conceptual triad to serve as a guide for further free improvisation. There are no rules, you're free to invent them or discard them.

Colour is infinite permutations, combinations, of subtle modes of feeling and associations like flavours of foods, aromas and moods of frequencies of pitch and radiance, relational resonance as within the realms of music, and i'm always patiently impatient to get to this stage, where there's no area of blank canvas left to be accounted for. Admittedly a typical occidental as opposed to an oriental notion, and you can quote me on that, if you like.

But all colour is relational, vibrating differently according to its context, whether harmoniously or discordantly, just like people. You can modulate and retune, fine-tuning and balancing one against another, blending or mutating, and who's to say precisely where red becomes orange and so on, all the way through the circular spectrum of the rainbow?

Vincent Van Gogh aspired to juxtaposing one pure naked colour against another, approximating the depth of harmonious loving feeling of one human for another and he did a pretty good job. Especially with the sunflowers and the irises which continue to resonate in divine sensual harmony despite silly irrelevant rumours that he didn't have much of an ear.

So forget "green is envy, red is anger, blue and green should never be seen, because you're yellow and black is evil and i've got the blues".

Or that some colours "clash". When it's simply that they're complimentaries of exactly the same tone, which is fascinating in itself.

Because these are all negative cliches of popular disinformation, disseminated by uncreatively incurious and terminally wounded life haters with jaded palettes who couldn't even tell you the exact colour of a sour grape and need to balance their chakras. Enough to make a rainbow cry!

So to round it all off and bring the process to fully integrated fruition, you bring the linear shadow tone back in. To fine-tune and weave- in the "dragon lines" (Chinese term) and minute dots and dashes of surface texture.

Binding it all together like a tapestry of veins,

'arteries', of rivers and streams through fertile land. The devil is not in the detail but angels may well be.

You behold the timeless tranquility of a living scene made manifest. Reflected in the rippled surface of A LIQUID MIRROR.

"I wish i had that gift", you say.

Well, i just handed it to you. Didn't i ?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Makes Rainbows~

Artwork:
        A LIQUID MIRROR, martin law, 2014

Blog Awards Ireland Nomination

 

Martin Rainbowmakers Blog martinrainbowmaker.blogspot.ie
has been Nominated in the Blog Awards Ireland 2014 Long List for Best Arts and Culture Blog

                           Congratulations!