CASTLES OF CORK.

In a previous post i mentioned 'Castles of Cork'. Three words which in one sense may sound self-contradictory, (an oxymoron) castles being heavy and cork being light.  While the cork referred to here is County Cork, Ireland.

The castles are the subject of a book i was commissioned to illustrate some years ago and titled The Castles and Fortified Houses of West Cork, authored by Michael J. Carroll and published in 2001, with eighteen illustrations.

So i intend to share a few of them here, not only because they were hardly acknowledged, considering the meticulous attention that they took to produce.  Twenty-five hours on each drawing with the flimsiest reference material, no architectural knowledge, and all done with a sable brush not a pen.  While seated on a narrow wooden arm of an armchair for want of an actual chair to sit on, in a substandard house with no daylight.

But also now as something to post on the blog, as i'm in that long-familiar void-like space of not just not knowing what to paint, but also what can be conceived of as having self-validating significance within the limitations of the medium itself.  Always a seemingly insoluble challenge which may be so, since all imaginable visual conceptions have been and are being explored collectively.

Which might be enough to stop anybody in their tracks and opt for improvising on an already existing mode, which is what tends to happen anyway whatever you do, and seeming ironically paradoxical.  Or alternatively to improvise on no preconceived mode at all, which also has been and is being continuously explored globally and comes to the same thing with both predictable as well as sometimes brilliant authenticity.

But architectural illustrations !  Not exactly a mode of choice, have to be a certain way of accurate depiction which has to be drawn in true perspective before dipping a brush into ink.  Very demanding, doesn't come easy, don't know how i did it and don't expect or intend to do it again.  Such meticulous detail, redeemed only by infusing a poetic consistency into every single mark of the brush.  Worth enlarging to see clearly.

At some stage of the project i had a dream recall which which tends to happen only rarely.  In the dream i was floating high above the now barely discernible foundation rubble of all that remains of a specific castle on a wild island.  Then in the dream, descending to view it as it was when originally intact, and from a sideways view.

The very next day the author unexpectedly requested and with little or no reference material but for a description, and no mention from me of the dream, that he particularly wanted a sideways view, naturally enough.  While i tend not to claim to having had an out of body experience, perhaps i did, who knows.

That drawing is the one with the title 'Oilean Beag' (small island) below it in Celtic script.  My apologies for any drawings without titles as i don't have the original artwork, only photocopies from before all titles were added.

But just look at all that stonework detail and every dot in place. Twenty-five hours of it including preliminary tracing layout of composition transferred to paper, meaning i drew each castle three times.

Meanwhile i have a blank canvas still sitting here for a month and no idea what to do with it. Need some colour, don't we all? Especially this time of year. Despite Christmas which i don't celebrate, may the human situation and the whole earth brighten up in all possible and presently inconceivable ways. *

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Martin Rainbowmaker.

P.S.  It would be nice to receive an appreciative comment as i've only had three or four in the past five years of continuous monthly posting.  Like working in an 'ivory tower' ! 
It's simple, just click any white title heading, or the word 'comments' in the list on the right.
Thanks in advance. ~

RAINBOW PLANET.

Beauty is held at bay by collective obliviousness to its sordid absence in man-made environments.~

Previous to completing this painting, Rainbow Planet, in mid-November 2017 i hadn't painted anything for just over three months, though that was always often the case.  To have a complete blank on what to express, or even why, while it being a natural part of the process can still be disconcerting.  To most people this would sound meaningless and like nothing, but that describes what it feels like, as if there's a limit to what's possible.

Especially when a sense of self is identified with what one does, it's like a loss of self-identity.  The more so in the absence of other meaningful links with circumstance and environment.  Without the bonds of kin or community there is awareness of emptiness a challenging soil to grow from.

Out of nowhere and not-knowing came the notion of a Rainbow Planet as a potential concept of an image that may embody some significance or at least a benevolent vibe.  Since beauty is held at bay by collective obliviousness to its sordid absence in man-made environments.  Perhaps a painting can serve the role of catalyst.  Hesitant for days however to approach such a thing.  How would it work or would it be a mere meaningless mess?  Needing something new to do to break the impasse.

Then one day i simply drew a measured line and that was a horizon,and took it from there, refining the tone of distance within the blue range of the rainbow.

Originally there was to be a central sun, but the radiance effect proved problematic, blending from white through yellow into the blue while avoiding green, as it takes orange to complete the progression.  So i obliterated it and made it a huge nearby planet instead.  Indicating this is an aerial view of another world, and that's a river not a road.  No need for roads when you can fly.

Painting for eight hours and more at a stretch, over a period of three days.  With a fine brush minimally modifying tonal details of distant terrain.  Microcosmic whispers of precise pigment barely discernible by electric light, niggling nearly to the point of nothingness.  The process slow and in the light of day can seem as if that was energy wasted.  But persisting till it's 'good enough.'

In imagination we sail in silence out across a vastness to infinity bathed in radiance of rainbow waves above strange and shimmering sunlit planetary plains pristine and unstained, sparsely populated random scatterings of dome clusters, distant temples, pyramids, a magnificence and ambiance of sublime timeless peace all pervading... and why not?  There must be billions of such realms out there.  In an infinite multiverse of dimensions everything imaginable and infinitely more already eternally is, since by its nature is implied there is nothing that is not. *

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Martin Rainbowmaker

ORGANIC DETAIL. (An improvisation.)

Pondering a possible post, while wondering what words for weeks of waiting on gestation of inspiration worthy of creation. Free flow forever in flux and fluctuation, dissolution and resolution subject to witness of the world with its wars and wild ways willfully oblivious to the prevalence of pollution by toxic solution. Souls seeking to sustain spontaneous access to the source as cause for sacred celebration.

Simply to nurture the creative spark for a candle flame that dispels the dark, to light the way of an unknown track while all of creation is under attack.

In plain language, it's not just that it's exponentially a puzzle of how to conceive a new painting that's not just another replicated version in the mode of something already known, but it's equally challenging to describe in words why that seems to be so.  

Bluntly stated, it's that all that we know as life on earth is under attack from misguided misuse of advanced technology which is damaging the fundamental but unacknowledged web of life.  

The majority of people are still either complacently not aware of the already present many leveled emergency everywhere in air, water, food, and power supply, or if they are superficially aware are in denial and understandably so.  

It's too extensive a subject for me to write about adequately and is not the purpose of this post.  Besides, all relevant information is and has long been freely available and in the public domain, just needing to be assimilated if not digested, and acknowledged and shared openly rather than repressed.  

All i want to do here is make a simple, predominantly visual post for continuity. More specifically to feature and focus on a few selected photos of close-up details of brushwork in previous paintings with the emphasis on organic. Having tried in other posts to describe, perhaps unsuccessfully what the use of that word points to, it probably can't be described anyway without examples.

There is a tendency perhaps for people to take in a painting at a glance and not look deeper into richness of texture and detail where there's often a lot going on in microcosm abstractly.  Depending on how loose or free-form a painting is.  In the process itself since the attention is on the tip of the brush, you'd naturally expect that to be where spontaneous subtleties occur.  Neither contrived nor totally random but integrated organically, sometimes creating worlds within worlds.

For now, just sharing a few close up photos of portions of paintings, hoping eventually to regain some clarity on where the painting process might be going.  Being always in a mode of not knowing, since my relationship with it and what exactly wishes to express itself, being receptive, is vulnerable to what is as well as isn't going on within and around me. 

Currently heightened sensitivity to the man-made and mundane modern environment, awareness of the system and Samsara, people suffering, trends, agendas, and dramas in the world at large.

Which, seeming of late so all prevailing, continual, and extreme, as that which was
hidden is increasingly exposed, interrupts, hopefully only temporarily, the flow of creative affirmation.

Without further elaboration and to sustain a flow, like water around an obstacle or stepping stones across a torrent, bringing to completion a string of close-up images of organic detail.
Plus one more for good luck. Notice the face of the bearded Bard if you can, emerging within the mossy grain of the bark of the oak. *

   

                         ****  ****  ****

 Martin Rainbowmaker. 

GAMBLE ON ROSES.

A blank canvas and a blank mind, at least that's a starting point.  Though it's usually quite a while before i proceed to the next stage. Needing an image that could embody a quality of beauty that even that word itself is too jaded by misuse to convey.

In a folder of digital photos, rambling roses in my back yard, originally a mere minimal rasp lost in long grass, and nurtured from next to nothing.  Flourishing and full flowering, blooming June after June.  Seeming suitable i chose to gamble on roses.   

Intricacies of small wildish roses in close-up, convoluted and complex to draw with accuracy. A gamble too, to position and compose with all elements in proportion, true to the photo without loss or distortion.  So the question arose, how to transpose, the photo eight and a half inches high, to canvas twenty inches high ?
I improvised a solution.

While it could be done by eye, a folded paper's edge marked to match the photo on the screen becomes a ruler.  Then folded longways on itself again and again and all divisions equalized.  Marked off as twenty equal divisions adjusted without calculation, being proportional equivalents to twenty inches, and translates to
actual inches on canvas.

Sometimes the best method may be no method at all.  In sharing, a showing is better.  Imagine describing how to tie shoelaces, we'd never get it.  The painting went through intentionally distinct stages over a period of two weeks.  All totally organic, nothing technical.  I confess to never finding it as easy as it may look, and you'd wonder why we do what we do.  Aspiring to be inspired and inspire, seems to involve method.

Preceding paragraphs relate to form and procedure.  Being just one way to form guidelines for following while also augmenting the weave of idiosyncrasies in the drawing's flow that just happen to be there unintended. Ironically impossible to describe, contrive, name, or even point to.  No surprise then, if all these words fall short, when there's no fixed target to speak of.  Jostled in a jumble that's a job to juxtapose, just to share the photo of the painting of a rose.

As with a certain specific visual characteristic of free-form flow which to the casual glance appears random and disorganized.  Whether you care to call it Tao, or naturalness, a description of which is not the phenomenon itself.  Subtlety seemingly invisible to rational sight.  Felt with the faculty with which we evoke images in the embers, creatures in the clouds, and facial features within foliage.

 Round off this ramble that arose around a gamble on a bramble.  Improvising on the most suitable image immediately at hand.  Something most structurally suited to epitomize a certain fresh, clean, and serene benevolent vibe.

Demystify and share the process in a way that may be helpful.  Using words as an aid to convey elusive but relevant known qualities in the realm of art and perception.  Ironically as always, but naturally so, there seem to be no adequately exact words to represent salient qualities so subtle as to be beyond categories of common classification.  Which may well be true of almost everything, as is often said, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.

To which i might alternatively add:  'The essence of art is present in heart when he 'the beholder' is absent'.  A sentence to contemplate closely.  The insight lost in the noise of a busy world, expressed as art.  ~

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

Martin Rainbowmaker.

FIELD PATTERNS. - (The painting).

A walk in the woods yielded little in the way of fresh inspirational images other than a few close-ups of dry leaves and twigs, bits of broken bark, primeval organic abstractions of crumbling fungal detritus, emblematic and evocative of arcane medieval interwoven wall hangings to ponder on. All a bit imaginatively out there and a tinge phantasmagoric, but with a complexity potentially taxing and tedious to draw for love or leaves and a white primed canvas was bored with waiting. The photo perspective at least a radical down to earth take on what we call 'the landscape'.  (Click to enlarge.)*

The inspiration situation still elusive and seeming somehow symbolic and symptomatic of the state of society and current energies at large on earth, and so, served as corrective prompting to find a lighter, more expansive and far-seeing focus of imagery to make into a painting as a conscious counterbalance of harmony of feeling in subtle ways of form and warmer colour, elevating the mood above ground level leaves.

Days later i happened to be sharing a glimpse of a recent crop circle drone footage video with a friend who was visiting. In itself an epitome of light, expansive, and far-seeing. Even then, i didn't know if or how this would give rise to a painting. Surprisingly since it did i'll take a leap forward now and show the whole painting as an instant uplift from leaves and then elaborate on how the video was a catalyst.

FIELD PATTERNS.  Acrylic on canvas. 20" by 16".

Visually, artistically, abstractly even, the pervading basic colours of ripe crop, green field patterns blending into soft blue horizon haze of far distance felt and seemed to provide a theme, and even if it's seen as a scene it's the harmonious interrelationship of shaped colour that's of the essence of whatever it may mean.

So i followed the full drone footage in flow of folds of fields unfolding.  Attentive when to pause at high points of balanced  composition.  Then with an aerial perspective zoom in to some further distant spot.

Expanding at least linearly by enlarging distant vistas.  Then, knowing nothing about screen -shots and what-not, zoomed more precisely with a camera and got a couple of clear shots directly from the screen.  One carefully measured for relative pictorial proportions and transcribed via pencil point to canvas.

If at a glance the painting might be assumed to be aspiring to be a photo, its not.  Why when you've got a photo make a fake one?  As with the leisured lilt of this literal language let alone likenesses it's the poetic juxtaposition of words for their shape, colour, sound, and flow.  With a tendency to write in the same mode that i mix colours and make images.  The poetic license of likeness is just fuel and foundation for refinement of feeling.

The largely unseen and therefore invisible part of a painting in progress is a palette.  French for any bit of old cardboard and no big deal, but what goes on there is more than a mere distracted dab of a brush.  Think alchemy, fine-tuning.  What could be a more subtle process than combining pigments and refining the ratio to the utmost degree and often at length, going there just as often as you go to the painting.

What else to say about this painting, FIELD PATTERNS?  It speaks clearly enough for itself. Took just three days to complete.  The atmospheric soft blend of detail into distance offset by large warm foreground field shapes.  Where three balls of light having laid down a crop formation lightly as any winged creature lays an egg.

  A panoramic patchwork structured like stained glass, network of field borders punctuated by dotted trees like droplets on a web, musical notes or a string of beads. A healing image with gentle touch and minimal correction but for fine-tuning the tones of the large crop fields.  Pale blue on white canvas the sky  barely touched and all unlaboured.  Just a harmonious piece of colour blending and balance with a flavour of calm lightness and peace.  *

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Martin Rainbowmaker.

     

SPIRAL OF LIGHT. (Photo update.)

Sharing this new photo of the painting 'Spiral of Light' because it's closer to the actual colour of the painting than the one previously published on this blog on March 13. 2017.  Especially with regard to the colour blue.

It was painted in January 2017.  The reason for the colour change was that my original photo was not in focus.  A friend called by and offered to sharpen it up using photo-shop, something i have never used as i like to keep to the actual painting which takes many hours of fine-tuning in the process of working on it to get it right.

My friend demonstrated the range of what was possible with many variations and we settled on the version previously published.  While it was crisper and an improvement in that sense, the actual colour was altered considerably, the painting itself does have more of a softness and warmth.  Even so, digital cameras do often alter the colour, depending on the light source.

  

In the meantime i let another friend use the modified image to be on the cover of a lovely set of Vedic Astrology Cards she has designed. She recently expressed a wish that it was closer to the true colour, blue especially.

So i've just taken some new and more accurate photos.  Sending them as a surprise she wasn't expecting.  Promptly realizing it would also be good to post them on the blog.  Perhaps with one or two close-ups of detail as previously.

Besides, i'm glad of a valid opportunity to show the painting again in another light.  Hopefully conveying even more of my imaginative intention of vision described in the original post, 'Spiral of Light, March 13. 2017.  ~

 ~~~  ~~~  ~~~  ~~~

 Martin Rainbowmaker.

  A BRIEF PREVIEW.

Additionally, here's a brief preview of a forthcoming post.  A most recent painting, already completed, and the stages it went through.  Titled:  Gamble On Roses.  With accompanying explanatory article.  So called due to not knowing how it would turn out.  Fortunately it worked out fine. ~