RIVER RE-VISION.

On Monday, January 26, 2015, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

Reflecting on the slow flow and undertow of a river in autumn in full flood. First phase impressions coalesced, calling for further sessions in density and depth. Pulled into play by the possibility of re-visioning.

Deciding, the ‘River in Autumn’ was ripe for an infusion of transformative enhancement. So that the painted substance speaks of the living liquid essence of wild water. That the community of trees blend and bond among themselves. The air itself all pervasive as in a lucid dream, of moss drenched in riverine fertility, archaic arboreal rusticity, the slow surge and ionic breath of mountain water.

Subsequently, over the next few days, drawn into long sessions from evening till dawn, meditatively mixing and modifying tones of pigment on a cardboard palette. Sleeping, only to pick up the thread where i left off. Working to densify and saturate, reintegrate, illuminate, consolidate, sleep late and wake late

Diverging from a daunting complexity of intricate branches, to follow the flow of feeling, immersed in the poetic particulars of paint. Returning again to soften subtle anomalies as they reveal themselves, till all is homogenized within itself.

A rhythm of random nuance ensues, entrained in silent light trance. Mindful manifestations of a spontaneous fluid brush, at one with the fluency of fingers.

Distinctly familiar layers of instinctual procedure, tentative touches enriching the invisible organically discerned underlying blueprint. Each stroke has meaning, relative to context. Anything but the limitations of any preconceived style. The only ‘style’ being the consistency of uncontrived naturalness.

There are no words for the subtleties of substance, and the mark says more than language in the muse of meditative mind. An infusion of feeling flows from fluency in the fingers, having a mind of their own. Receptivity and incremental improvisation along familiar secret paths with no name.

There are no instructions for the free flow of imagination, visualization being already free outside the box. Yet the balance is precise as a tightrope or surfing a wave. To coalesce and enhance, weave and reintegrate the dance, of that which wishes to emerge as if by chance.

Popular opinion only imagines a mere parody of the painting process, its true nature naturally elusive beyond logic. With constant awareness there is no need to think. Long sustained pre-verbal absorption often self-reflects, realizing momentarily, the peripheral context of being in a room, a specific place, has vanished, the still focus all that remains. So much for time and space.

Attentively, intuitively scanning, in accord with an unnameable angle of vision until all is in place. With inevitable idiosyncratic quirks interwoven and tucked into a tapestry of wholeness with loose ends blended. Some may remain but let them be.

This is a serious form of play. Until it’s time to pack the paints away, and see how it looks in the light of day. Just as it is will have to do. ‘River in Autumn, number 2.’ ~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker.

IN WINTER WOODS.

On Saturday, January 10, 2015, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

A collage of fallen leaves.

 

Seize the day, as they say. My simple aim was toward ancient oaks. A rough strategy for which part of forest park to walk, as winter light would allow, but off the beaten path.

While the path long lost like a lame lament loops back around in time, compounding ancient ground. A ritual, void of intent, a stray arrow loosed and lost in deep thicket.

Sealed through time with tar and cement, yet a single tree is wild and free as one which is one with wilderness. Knowing nothing of ‘nature reserve’, draws endless reserves through earthbound roots.

Returning to the woods on foot, a winter walking meditation, is no mere brisk jaunt to aid the circulation. A turning away within, in the spirit of mindfulness, in respect of our shared destiny, our dignity.

Transforming with intent, the worldly drama and grim pillage, to one of silent pilgrimage. At the turning of an age, in the company of sleeping trees.

A sceptical age prevails all around, proud of the progress we think we’ve found. As if we’d left the past behind, when the myth of progress is in the mind.

The loss of the now is the notion of time, that we’re moving between what’s ahead and behind. “It’s one giant step for humankind”, revoking all stories by which we’re defined.

As now, or so it seems, at some pre-pagan point within the dream, unmindful of the ground beneath our feet, the plot got lost in self-deceit. The wild stag vanished without trace, no wolves’ lament when the last was killed.

Through the woods, shocked silence sings, falls through branches bare of leaves. But for the call of a plaintive wren, in deep gullies of hidden streams.

All language fails while this water sound, is lilting something more profound. Ensnared by delusion that runs so deep, by language locked in perpetual sleep.

These remnant woods hold a presence sublime, our thoughts, an anomalous paradigm. While lyrically and literally, we’re hostages to history.

So, to ramble on, relatively microcosmic as a dust mite, in a living carpet that sees and hears. Not get snagged by low bramble snares that rip. Crunch softly not to startle or alarm, feathered folk in the underbrush, aware, though hidden and unheard.

To pause and stand amazed, listen to the silence deep within, and breathing slow. Stand as one with a dense, intensely vertical maze. Tall, sleek, slender, ground-grasping talons of evergreen. Gaze skyward where top tips touch in cathedral quiet.

To circumnavigate around what a friend later referred to as “the faerie fort”. A group of rocks on an oak-topped mound. Wrapped around with roots and crowned with deep cushioned moss, the way, one could say it was meant to be.

If all of this is holographic then so are we.

Some unseen force did a thorough job, but then, perhaps, it did itself. As is now known and shown, that leaves of plants and trees, feel, hear, speak, and see.

How sensitive are we? Notice how our plunder returns in kind with thunder. All life is one and space is no division, how then treat the sacred with derision?

No space without form. No form without space, and space, so called, is our breath of life. As Dante said of wonder: “Attaining to wonder, seek not further what may be behind it.”

Beyond that, is what we are, we are that, and that is sufficient. At least for now. ~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker

IMAGICATIVITY.

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

Why should difference divide people when it’s what everything has in common? Having uniqueness in common we are all unified, like snowflakes. True unity is when the components are not merely interchangeable. ~

~~~~ ~~~~

It’s Christmas, though it could just be my imagination. Don’t misunderstand,

seasonal celebrations are of great importance. I think we can agree though, ‘it’s Christmas’ only to the extent that a majority agree to acquiesce to it’s being a literal reality.

Otherwise it isn’t.

So i’m not about to pick holes in anybody’s Swiss cheese, quite the opposite. Just to say that it shouldn’t be difficult to discern the difference between a consensus agreement, and an otherwise undisputable actuality. Taboo apart, it’s only Christmas to one who believes it is without question. You have until ‘next Christmas’ for the penny to drop.

Put simply, the word (any word), is not that which it refers to, but a coded significator to spark the imagination. Otherwise we could subsist on scraps of paper inscribed with the word ‘food.’

We recognize the difference between the signpost and the road, the label and the contents, the word and the actuality. Otherwise we remain ‘spell-bound’, and starve, going nowhere.

 

The whole point being, that what we call (only) imagination, is actually our greatest asset and attribute. Yet, when not recognized, realized and respected as such, is our delusion and downfall. Leaving us vulnerable to any and all verbal manipulation.

It’s one thing to call a spade a spade, but that’s merely an agreement so you don’t bring me a fork instead. A spade is not really a spade, but only referred to as such for convenience and the same goes for Christmas. Try asking for a spade in another country.

Such is the magical power of imagination and belief, that unless you have a handle on it, it will be handled for you by the handlers of society, and it is and they do. If they were to decree, ‘Christmas is now on midsummer’s day, (for your comfort)’, would you still firmly believe it to be Christmas, and enjoying it, eventually agree? They only have to check on you once a year.

The next question, why is (or was) it called the season of peace and goodwill for only a few days, when it coincides with ‘saturnalia’ and more, the rest of the year devoted to war, business as usual? Why not 364 days of peace and goodwill and a day off to freak out, or speak out? It’s a backward world that does everything in reverse. Which leads to a case in point, or a point just in case.

Multifarious multitudes of millions, bearing banners banning bullies with bombs. Brandishing upside down and in reverse CND peace symbols like sheep demanding their wool back.

Forgetting the tree of life grows up from the ground not upside down. When simply Googling the right ‘rune’ puts it straight.

Such is the force of unquestioned belief. Holding up targets thinking they are shields doesn’t sound like a wise strategy, magically counter-productive.

Wikipedia suggests even the designer himself was unsurprisingly unhappy, regretting what he’d done.

The rune ‘Algiz’ (right way up) protects from negativity, grounding it in the earth, where uranium belongs. Otherwise you could get struck by lightning or at least be self -disempowered. With so much emotive energy and belief invested, it only takes one psycho with a master copy to topple the dominoes, but such ideas always backfire when the intent is anti –life. Be a well-read rune, rotate sunwise and activate the tree of life.

A better bet would be, the symbiotic symbol of Yin/Yang unity, known as ‘the supreme ultimate.’ The ancient and elegantly simple circle-based epitome of the harmonious union and mutually arising complementarity of opposites. Where the existence of each, gives rise to the other. Each holding the seed of the other within its centre as a secondary link, or kingpin/queenpin. There is no better beautiful symbol of peace and unity, and turning it upside down makes no difference.

 

Recently, a friend produced a palm-full of crimson (spell it right) ‘fuchsia’ - flowers and some rose petals, and the deep crimson lent itself to being arranged on paper, a background white as snow. With a photo image to show how delicately it transformed into an intricate line of dancers. When i mentioned to my friend what i’d been party to the creation of, she said “good, i knew you would.”

As for the flaming flowers in the garden, actually being the fire in the grate reflected on window glass and captured accurately, this time, solely by reflection.

Similarly in the flow of the moment (how can a moment flow?), trawling through my photo folders for anomalous and unused shots.

An image that leaped out while walking leisurely in the woods. Scramble at the wayside foot of a pine stand slope, to where a random rounded rock reveals its profile. With a moss-encrusted rustic head-dress and even an eye if you look up close, pause the crack and crunch of dry detritus sticks to do a digital fix of a so called moment in the flow.

Also, closer to home, cabbage leaves envisioned as canvas-worthy, being literally lilac, turquoise, and soft yellow besides brassican green.

In one and the same plot where hydrangeas had bloomed, like soft firework displays muted in modest shade. The interesting intricacy of the ordinary is extraordinary. The flowers making the most graceful in close-up displays of petal-face greeting. Turning to sparse simplicity like Zen butterflies at the season’s turn, breeze-blown soft pastel blue-pink wings in the shade.

Not unrelated, since being a spontaneous sunward shot from the self-same spot, with either a lens flare or digitally purple orb above the sun.

Slumbering in smoky molten gold beyond the peninsula, between dark house shapes and backyard walls. All in a quick shutter’s click of a moment which had already changed imperceptibly, without having for a micro-second ceased to be now.

So how about the Tao, the Dao (the Dow), the largely ‘forgotten but not gone’ original face of the familiar?

Being a compilation, a combination of imagination, image magic, and creativity. I call it imagicativity. ~

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

Rainbowmaker.

NEW WINTER COAT.

On Monday, December 15, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

It’s not that everything is connected, it’s that there are no separate bits to connect.

~~~~

Small birds flit and flutter in the bare branch back yard web of willow twigs. Fleeting forays foraging from the feeder. Leaves yellowing to ochre scattered on the cold damp ground.

Duffle pockets yet again in need of needle and the black thread knotted in a tangle and lost against the black hooded and toggled coat with sleeve split under the arm.

Imagining and visualizing in moments what kind of coat to substitute whether for wet, wind, or cold of winter. Something loose like a cloak to cover the knees, or even tweed to wrap around like a native blanket without the need for slick oilskin or flapping synthetic plastic.

Backdrop of dusk stretched behind the dark drab street and small town country market stalls dismantled. Another quick look in a charity shop before leaving on foot up the hill.

The theme being the quickening of dream, the imagination, the continuity of visualization, its manifestation neglected as art lost and forgotten as last night’s dream in the self-same seam-free subconscious.

A long overcoat hangs half hidden waiting in the wings of the material realm. Seeming to be the only one in town of all shops of dream remnants and wasn’t there before, but i was confident it would be.

Near closing, the little lady checking the day’s takings helps me into a large loose coat with “oh it ‘is’ a man’s.” Feels comfortable, impeccable as new for just ten euros, and i keep it on round the clock glad of a good winter coat.

Still coat clad later by the fire and curious what i’m wearing, a distinctly well-made garment. Mysteriously shifting between dark grey to brown with the light and a hint of thin stripe, and like fine fur, grows in one direction down for run off of rain.

Label of obscure Europan origin bearing three animal heads, Sheep, Alpaca, Angora goat. With a conscience hoping the animals were unharmed, not shot by arrow from horseback like a buffalo or caged and abused. Checking online to find the creatures sheared but otherwise content, and who with what vibration wore this finely tailored garment?

Realizing the unknown is all for me to heal, and permeate with thankfulness and high vibrations from inside out. I fill the room with sage smoke, wafting with words to the four directions, plus Mother Earth, Sky, Heart, and incense lit.

‘Mitakuye oyasin’, (all our relations) blessed. Celebrate the night by flickering firelight with Spanish guitar and healing vibrations wrapped in a coat of songs.

Wishing only to be inspired and inspire, through the universality of all art. Satisfied the totem animals i wear came to no harm other than a summer haircut, my play becomes a photo shoot before the night is out.

With the product of recalibrated pelt laid rumpled and loose across a chair with silkworm scarf for sky. Improvising landscapes just for fun and this is the result.

So celebrate, lest we forget, art is first of all respect for all nature sacred emerging in mind from the seam-free continuum. Generosity shared in the spirit of gratitude for food, clothing, and shelter. 

 

 

May we all be warm in winter, harming nothing, creating beauty, speaking truthfully, and amending without need for mending, thanks to a new winter coat.~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker.

RIVER IN AUTUMN.

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

Talking of rambles in the wood along the river in autumn and the process of the painting of the same name.

The meandering serpentine long intestine of artistic assimilation of nature’s nutritious

impressions, photographically captured, compared, and contemplated to a refined mulch.

Imagination blending celtic autumn realms with overtones of Sung dynasty landscape scrolls evocative of profound integrity refined, and wild abundance of woods and thickets in the mist somehow weaves through archetypal images along the riverbank.

Being the epitome of the opposite of all brash trash, leaving only calm naturalness just as it is.

Enlarging photos on a screen to skim the rippled water with an urge for soft pencil on pure primed white wove dot grain texture of taut canvas.

Two attempts in a row to freely draw two different things, both duly erased for being not yet it.

Yet somehow organically the scene i’d seen emerged from the leeway of memory and actually manifesting optical perspective.

Thereby spontaneously immersed for two evenings until dawn, carefully coaxing on to canvas with a lean pencil point slantwise.

Pencils are important, mightier than a Mars probe and better for drawing. The pencil is a versatile tool, it does what you want it to do, doesn’t require recharging and doesn’t eavesdrop or intrude in your drawing room.

And more, the un-camouflaged and unedited loose tangle of hair-like windblown lines and soft graphite shading can then be turned to tone, or stone, with just the faintest wish of a wash of a fine soft water filled brush.

Lightly illuminating spaces between forms contained, leaves a web-work tracery like mosaics of stained glass. Linear contour of rock and root mutate in a weave of webbed lines soft as a whisper at first, serving to bring into relief what emerges from smudged anomalies.

Forms following their own uncontrived authenticity either gel, or transmute accordingly. Anomalous brush marks randomly hint arboreal runes of entrance to portals and dimensions.

And like a river in late autumn going with the flow, foibles, failings, fables, and all. Playful and guided by true imagination

A muse, an amusing but somehow unassuming word to use. In respect of cultured discipline, frugal refinement of pine wood smoke ink dilutions, and minimal colour on soft white.

RIVER IN AUTUMN, is a monochrome with muted minimal colour fresh off the brush. Being both painting, and by contrast, drawing, reflecting elemental water wisdom in swirls and spirals.

A pencil has potential and you don’t need stencils, move out of that groove. First we were assaulted by a civilization of boxes only to be bombarded with sacred geometry

So, pause and gaze at the world of all that flows, specific foam shapes swirl in vortices defying rigours and rules, arbitrary structure, gracing the floating world with outrageous circles and cycles of free form flow.

Think of this panel as a portion of pencil poetry in process. Imagine it as being a primal piece of pagan patchwork embroidery. With a blend of hanging bamboo landscape scrolls and Sung dynasty elementals of literary ink. This product is free of all anti-occidents.~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker.

MOUNTAINS MOVE.

On Mon, November 24, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

‘Unless your heart be the size of a grain of mustard seed, mountains are moving.’~

It may be true to say that mountains move. At least, whenever i look i find them to be moving. Better still than moving mountains is to be able to be moved by them. Though many may remain unmoved, and move along lacking a loving look.

It may be true to say that mountains rise up from the earth, and equally true to say they fall down to the sea. They are even seen to be rising from the deep. Diving like leviathans down to the ocean floor, only to arise again as a distant shore.

Peaks are often seen in passing, half hidden by a range of hoary hills. Like diving dolphin fins, or starkly surreal as spectral ships with sombre silhouetted sails.

 

Vanishing behind rising ridges like humpback whales with scaly skin, brooding dark against a sinking twilight sky.

While, on a still and distant gulling cry of day, a blue limpid liquid mirror laps. Fringed by froth and foam of lulling fronds, the slow rise and fall seeps back between singing stones, a line erased to sink in silted sand. The swish and pull of the swaying sea.

Low window view between backyard walls, of a distant peak. A constant kitchen companion, weather warning from the west. When opaque grey approaching rain, blanks the mountain long before a downpour pelts the glass.

A quiet inner affection pervades all such small familiar facets and details of the day. The worldly world of war regards as mundane facts, void of innate significance. Insulating ego from feeling, present poetic beauty in the ordinary.

Naturally, noting such as being signs and promptings for projects of imaginative creation, the mountain called forth an intent, the seed of peak experience. Through days of late November rains.

A new day dawned though i woke late, to a pure blue oasis of a day. Down to the round curved strand and jutting headland. Flat low tide around the promontory point, to see what the sea had to say.

Zooms fall short of the pyramid-peak, rugged ridged with rounded shoulders down, and the island’s tail bearing small green fields below.

Boulders backed by a cleft cliff face, scattering the rock strewn place. Black stones green stained dragged down to where the tide turns.

Spreading outward across a smooth expanse of unprecedented cloud-free cobalt sky and sea, such that adequate words fail me.

The focus of original intent ‘literally’ moved by circumstance or chance, to ‘pan out’ (could that be a pagan term?) the context all inclusive and there may be a lesson there.

Being but an exploratory trawl, casting about for artistic inspiration and netting a good catch, twenty seven shots in all. Many other possible focusses reflected on along the way in coming round to the point.

But what a calm and tranquil sea. Cloud-free sky as blue as blue can be.

A wish of peace in late November.

Images of beauty to remember. ~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker.

Quantum Autumn.

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 12:47 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Good artistic quantum hunting day today, Nov. 9. in coillte Gleann Garbh, woods of the 'rough glen', Glengarriff.  Took 22 potshots with my digital bow & studying the results on computer. Quantum (refers to evolution of artistic eye) by stark contrast with a lifetime of spools of many miss shots in the thicket.

 Whatever about planetary raising of frequencies it shows through whatever art one is engaged in.  Enough of a day's catch to step up the painterly input of inspiration for the foreseeably imaginative future, learning a lot of leaps by just looking.

 'Quantum Autumn' now there's a title !  Has an almost Book of Kells illuminated look about it, and 13 letters too, numerically symbolic of quantum leaps, actually. 

Passovers of November showers in light like Constable captured.  Rainbow arc painted on scowling slate sky. Tapestries of illuminated oak twigs etched in white, startling against leaden purplish grey, the leaf fall in antique gold.  Beech browns deluge down thunderous white water over obsidian glazed black boulders shouldering ever green goths of moss and iron cast roots, a sheer drop to fast flowing dark and brackish water.

 Watch your step on shiny rounded cetacean slabs where the slow dark mirror shape shifts into a weir, medieval oak leafshapes collage patterns on gemstone pebbles in shallow pools between clefts, shimmering upside down bare black branches overarching the torrent.

  Rock grey here is dark and wet with Celtic green.  Meandering beech brown mosaic carpet pasted and rain pitted to the path.

At leisure later diving into images with the zoom.  Microscopic bunji jumps on a safe screen, splitting atoms and molecules beyond surface appearance, delving beyond delusive structures, noting how disintegrating dots link up like pearl strings to form the world we walk within, food for unthinking future brush work.

So, turning away as the last looming shower of the day, glazes a paler grey, dimming the illumined face of the frowning peak.  Following along by fast paced waters under ancient oaks.  Down pre

carious steep stone steps to take five parting shots from the lip of a lapped rock promontory at water level in mid stream.

Rehearsed seasons ago from the same spot with a crap camera and now remembering to return.

Shooting straight upstream into the mouth of swirling silken eddies and swirls, overhung with bare black branches and deep green banks.  Bull's eye parting shots where the body of Kerry River water swells out from a distant nexus along a timeless tunnel of oak lined banks, a monochromatic icon of all archetypal and dragonish rivers of vision, dark, majestic, and slow.  So, there you go, on with the flow. ~

~~~~  ~~~~  ~~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker.