On
Wednesday, November 5, 2014, Martin Law
<martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:
Elusive
mystery sublime.
Sombre,
soulful, distant, grey.
Far
horizons under rain.
~~~~
The
living planet has changing modes or moods, that sweep across her
surface like the subtle flicker of expressions across a human face.
These
ever changing expressions are not simply ‘out there’, in a world
separate from ourselves, but are modes of the Earth-mind,
simultaneously reflected on the soul-screen consciousness of her
sentient creatures.
Timeless,
archetypal, and indivisible from the whole soul presence of the
planetary Goddess, (being by definition she who gives birth to
everything, everywhere, forever.)
VISUALIZATION:
While
assembling a few specific words to evoke memory in imagination, i
also did a small pencil sketch, only three inches square, to make it
exactly visual. Pencils are perfect for visualizing.
Somehow,
working that small, concentrates the focus of imagination. Feeling
from within, softly coaxing and allowing an image which wishes to
emerge in form. It’s a receptive, perhaps more than a projective
process.
The
pencil draws without pressure, on paper. The imagination draws on
memory impressions. I feel my way into an imagined place, seeing
into the subtle shorthand as if i was really there. Invoking a
situation i would like to be in. Pinpointing precise
characteristics, tonal relationships.
Most
people think rain is a nuisance and it can seem so unless you’re
dying of thirst, and that, ‘vision’ has something to do with
opticians and short-sightedness. Whereas, what manifested here from
nowhere in particular, was envisioned.
FOUNDATION.
Transpose
the seedling idea into a larger pot, in this case a canvas, primed to
the right degree between rough and smooth, relative to the detail and
direction of brushwork intended.
I
transferred all spatial relationships from the sketch to the canvas
by measured marks on the edge of a cigarette paper packet,
proportionately into the equivalent in inches.
For
example, it’s important how high or low the horizon is, because
that’s the eye level in the landscape. The higher the horizon the
higher we are above ground, the lower it is, the closer our viewpoint
is to the ground. It had to be exact. An original sketch often has
features worth preserving.
Grey:
A sober substance that expresses tonal density. Neutral and
dispassionate with a kind of dignified gravity, unattached to any
particular feelings of colour vibration. The gravitas of tonality.
Degrees on the tonal spectrum between the void of oblivion and the
plenitude of lightness. Tonality is an emotive factor.
The
same applies to the tone of a colour, but with grey it’s not
attached to any predominant area of feeling. Grey is like a
background foil that serves to enhance the qualities of any colour
it’s put next to by being neutral.
Combining
neutral with primary and secondary colours has a lot of
possibilities. It exercises an element of restraint in the all too
common tendency to indulge in too many oversweet colours at once,
thereby losing the theme. There are millions of examples of this on
the internet.
It’s
all about relationships, and ‘too many cooks can spoil the broth.’
Unless you prefer orgies to mutual understandings. I have explored
the purest of combinations of primary and secondary colours in
abstract and geometrical formations previously. What i’d call
naked and intimate colour harmonies. But harmony is still about
natural optimal mutual balance.
For
anybody who thinks that landscape painting is somehow opposed to
abstraction, this one small example is a lead-in to the sensual
intuitive science which it is. But it’s about feeling-tone, and
memory impressions, and what most epitomizes those impressions.
I’m
focusing here on the subtle aesthetic properties of grey by contrast
with popular prejudice. Something quite distinct from, ‘grey
clothes are boring, grey streets are drab, grey skies are
depressing’, etc.
It’s
in the perception of the beholder, whether or not you bring love to
something just as it is. Or whether you bring concepts of judgement
and preformed prejudice.
Rocks
and mountains are grey, skies are grey for a large part of the year,
many birds and animals including cats are grey and we love to stroke
them. So there’s nothing inherently negative about any of that
FOUNDATION
(continued.)
So,
i painted a neutral grey, positioning everything in its right
relationship, and everything ‘is’ relationship. I learn much of
relevance to relationship through painting. It’s not as if art
only pertains to ‘an art form’ and not to life as a whole.
The
truth that everything is inter-related and inter-dependent, which is
a whole learning of non-duality, the one insight that can stop us
screwing up the world we are one-with so badly.
The
fundamental insight that divisions don’t divide, they unify. As
in, ‘who’s fence is it, mine or my neighbour’s?’ Silly
question, and not one that need cause offence, though it often does,
and globally. Who’s national border is it?
Ours,
right. We all have difference in common, it’s a mutual agreement.
Distinctness is the surest sign of underlying unity. There’s never
a ‘this’ without a ‘that’, and being spell bound by the magic
of words we choose one and reject the other and think that’s what
we are, when it’s a mutual relationship.
ILLUMINATION.
Enlivening
the panel of grey sky, breathing life of the memory of clouds into
it. From slow moving overcast brooding density down to distant
horizons. Creating aerial space in full spectral distance. Softly
modifying and blending nuances of authentic atmospherics.
Atmospheric
means no harsh contrast must leap out, nothing too arbitrary.
Attending to this, watchfully, mindful of distance, forms unfold
organically by themselves. Bringing farsighted hypnotic horizons,
where the slow motion action is, into full binocular view.
Modulating appropriate muted colour tones of far off fields,
illuminating tree tops in a rare ray of late light.
CULMINATION.
Accumulating
layers of illumination, miniscule modification, fine-tuning,
following, flowing with, and filling in the filigree of implied
underlying organic web work, funnelling down to culmination and
completion. Ten hours in all, not counting preparation.
Or
the many contemplative tea and smoke breaks. Sipping in sweet
silence of solitude, scanning every centimetre for anomalies.
Anomalies in the flow, small but glaring glitches, calling for
further attention and reintegration. From the viewpoint of a
perfectionist squint with a night owl’s laser vision into the
sensed but unseen. There’s always more lurking in there.
Till
it ultimately winds down, to the relief of let-go, let it be,
satisfactory enough to matt varnish, blend and homogenize any subtle
glitch or glare to photograph, and leave well alone, looking long,
cup in hand.
I
wished for a way to share
and
say, under clouds of soulful grey,
far
horizons under rain.
Obscures
a line of distant hills,
merging
neutral tones of earth,
timelessness
beyond the world.
Fields
of melancholy grey,
mystically
turn away.
A
half remembered ancient dream.
~~~~
~~~~ ~~~~
Martin
Rainbowmaker~
Art:
A SOFT RAIN MOOD, martin law, Nov 2014
