"For in the past decade, there has been no art too sorry to be sold at auction, no art too brainless, slapdash, repetitive, obnoxious or devoid of originality. More millionaires bought and sold art than at any other time in history. More art was constantly required.It hardly mattered whether the work had any meaning, let alone quality. Practically the only rule was that it must be advanced art, what used to be called the avant-garde; all this meant was if second-rate, then knowingly so,and if kitsch, then in an ironic rather than innocent fashion."
from an article in The Guardian 13/02/09 'Hard times will improve improve public and private art' by Laura Cumming.

old painting, old story, new chapter

from 'Renascence'

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

- Edna St.Vincent Millay

puzzles

overlooked details

[Exposed on the cliffs of the heart]

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down
there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial.-But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart...

_ Rainer Maria Rilke

- Translated by Stephen Mitchell

"'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'"

- Lewis Carroll

Crossing the Border

But Herodotus? A book written two and a half thousand years ago? Well, yes: because all our thinking, our looking and reading was governed during those years by an obsession with allusion. Each word brought another one to mind; each had a double meaning, a false bottom, a hidden significance; each contained something secretly encoded, cunningly concealed. Nothing was ever plain, literal, unambiguous - from behind every gesture and word peered some referential sign, gazed a meaningfully winking eye. The man who wrote had difficulty communicating with the man who read, not only because the censor could confiscate the text en route, but also because when the text finally reached him, the latter read something utterly different from what was clearly written, constantly asking himself: What did this author really want to tell me?

from "Travels with Herodotus'- Ryszard Kapuscinski

On Sense and Reference

“The reference and the sense of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated idea. If the reference of the sign is an object perceivable by the senses, my idea of it is an internal image, arising from memories of sense impressions which I have had and acts, both external and internal, which I have performed. Such an idea is often saturated with feeling; the clarity of its separate parts varies and oscillates. The same sense is not always connected, even in the same man, with the same idea. The idea is subjective; one man’s idea is not that of another.”

- Gottlob Frege

Handinneres

Inneres der Hand. Sohle, die nicht mehr geht
als auf Gefühl. Die sich nach oben hält
und im Spiegel
himmlische Straßen empfängt, die selber
wandelnden.
Die gelernt hat, auf Wasser zu gehn,
wenn sie schöpft,
die auf den Brunnen geht,
aller Wege Verwandlerin.
Die auftritt in anderen Händen,
die ihresgleichen
zur Landschaft macht:
wandert und ankommt in ihnen,
sie anfüllt mit Ankunft.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

'But we learn the patterns of stories before we learn their meanings, ...' - Margaret Atwood

barriers and pathways

forest

tangled web

diptych

mountainside

Belladonna

Figures

section of a wall scroll 1.5 metres high x 5 metres wide I am working at the moment

back to the mountain

thinking