An invitation from me and the sea

Dear friends 

I am nearing a comma - a place of pause - in what I'd have to name one of the most prolongedly challenging chapters of my life. For now, I will stick to the steadying process this maelstrom has called me to in my studio.

I cannot help but see you as mysteriously and powerfully linked to the way my work's unfolded during recent weeks and I want to thank you for this and for the countless ways in which you open my eyes to new ways of seeing and perceiving.     

This coming Monday, my exhibition titled Waters I have Known opens at The Diversion gallery in Marlborough. Marlborough is a watery region at the tip of our South Island that's perhaps best known for its delicious wines (carbon-zero, some of these ; )) and for its magnificent, moody Sounds. You may - actually, how could you; it's ages ago! - recall my posting a few entries from the Sounds when I was there on a writing retreat in August last year (a more-or-less unexpected treat after Questions of Balance opened at The Arthouse in Christchurch).

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I popped the bigger paintings for this show into the back end of a freight truck which means I have a wee bit of space now to complete the final few small images. These I'll carry underarm when I fly North this weekend. 

This body of work explores a number of different themes, perhaps the two primary ones being (1) the power, wonder and fragility of our world's oceans and (2) this blogging community. These may at first seem worlds apart but I don't believe they are. We are water; our different countries and cultures are linked by water.  . .

I'd like to extend an invitation to you all. . . It seems there's (at least) one more work that wants making and I'd love to make it a 'communal composite'. (You'll be able to get a good sense of the journey of this work by visiting the new blog I've been building specifically to accompany this series. I have yet to write up the background story/exhibition statement and will do that before the exhibition opens on Monday 18th.)

What I'm proposing is this . . . please consider the subjects of ocean and community (specifically, but not exclusively our blog community) and send me a few lines that encapsulate what they mean to you? You will notice in the attached painting that I have already quasi-/metaphorically painted you all into some of this work (this one's titled Group Dynamic and you can see the process of its making here). . .

Group Dynamic (detail)
Oil on board - 2010 -  910 x 910MM

It occurred to me once I'd finished this painting that these 'featureless' web-style portraits are as they are because this is a place where the ego resides 'elsewhere/outside', so long as we turn up here and meet each other openly, with warmth and curiosity and without judgement or expectation. . .  There's a particular energy inherent in this modus operandi that enables us to take our place as individuals and as equals at our virtual, communal table. The portraits (each one tinged with light from its interaction with whomever happens to pull up a chair beside him/her) become keyholes to rooms and worlds we might ordinarily not have access to. To my mind, this is a facilitative process, one that has all the elements of privileged encounter.

The web is an extraordinary tool for communication. As a portal, it offers us so much more than first meets the eye. Each time we enter this space - this curiously intimate, electronic space - we open doors to unexpected new places. Something mysterious happens whether or not we intend it, I think. I acknowledge your generosity in this - and, too, appreciate the vast wealth of complex material and layered landscapes that continue to beckon with your invitations to ponder, research, engage and explore. How much of life enacts itself beyond the eye, beyond the ear, beyond our rational comprehension, and yet there can be little doubt that despite our various dramas and our different realities, worlds of wonder and glory are out here, ready and waiting to meet us.

With your permission, I would like to incorporate the lines you send me in a composite image (part painting, part text) that'll say something about us all and take its place as a kind of communal breastplate. . . I'm not sure what follows on from this, only that this work will carry all your names and if it finds a home somewhere, you will all receive a piece of it, somehow or other. . . (this is about as far as I've got to date. . . does this make sense/sound okay?)

More from me as more arises. Meantime, if you would like to participate in this spontaneous and possibly (but hopefully not too) hair-brained project, please write, reflect and write some more. . . ?! We have just three days to make this work and I'd dearly love it to be a part of this show. . . time is of the essence!

Thank you all v much - Claire
(otherwise known as A Relic)

detail

(PS. Words can be posted on either blog - I will be sure to check both places ~~~ and here's my email address ~ clarab@earthlight.co.nz )

Fucshia bark, compost & waters I have known

Yesterday's hours in the studio took me through a state of scratchy, unwelcome irascibility towards calm. I'm working on a series of composite paintings whose title for now, is Waters I have known. Each piece contains eleven images that I hope will allow you/me access to countless related landscapes, research layers, imaginative worlds... (I realized the other day - and this came as a complete surprise - that these paintings' compositions bear strong resemblance to the newly formatted Image pages on Google. It's odd how associations like these find their way into our work, regardless of whether we're conscious of it at the time, or not? I hope they - the paintings - will extend a similar invitation to enter, ponder, explore...)

This pic shows a detail from my 'document' on ice...

Despite the calm I found in the painting, I went to bed feeling wound up and woke this morning with my heart pounding and my fists clenched; puzzling encounters with sharp-toed dragons and foul-breathed monsters were features of last night's dreamscape. The dragons reminded me of the chameleons I befriended and tended as a child in South Africa, but the ones in my dream had metallic hides, reflective titanium plates unresponsive to either my pummeling or my tender touch.

Their monster companions were shaggy, their mussed-up pelts like fuschia bark that sloughed off them as they walked. They sauntered casually in the face of my indignation and - at one time - frank distress, browsing nonchalantly on frangipanis and pohutakawa leaves and leaving behind them steaming dung heaps as high as mountains. . . These were sweet-smelling intricately-engineered pats, apparently innocuous (apart from the volume!) and looking every bit like fertile garden compost artfully arranged by an architect. I could neither see around them nor climb up and over them (too slippery - no way to safely prop a ladder or get a sensible foothold)... and the muck was quivering, alive. It morphed into buildings, bridges, mountain ranges as I watched. It was teasing me, I think. Muck posing a challenge. A question. How do you reckon you're going to find your way over, under, around and through this little lot, eh?

Heaven alone knows.

Dreams seem to be a particularly vivid experience for many of us these days... we seem to need to recall them, want to write about them, to lay their content out as evidence, a map, a series of questions. Do we have our own, uniquely personal dream language, our individual lexicon of symbols, or we do dream common dreams, our nets dipping into the same wellspring? Both? And so much more besides... ?

My dream radar's been oddly quiet these past few weeks. I was telling Penelope and Pam just yesterday that I've not remembered many dreams lately, although I wake often with achey shins, an indicator to me that I've walked miles of some description in my sleep.

Was it Salvador Dali who said 'When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another?' Is it just our bodies that sleep - or that assume the pose of sleep? It seems to me that on some level or other we are always wide awake?

Ink & pencil on paper - sketch - CB

Where did your dreams take you last night?

Lemon Meringue Phi, blistered toes & the ocean

Life continues to lay it on thick... it seems lots of us are feeling buffeted and blown these days? While I don't want to sound like a grumbling little minion - all things are relative - fact is I've been up on my toes and in a state of high(-ish) alert for toooo many months. If life's a dance, then this year has been one long, rigorous rehearsal. Everything will find its place in time, but today the bones in my feet ache; there's a blister on every toe and no more plasters in the drawers. I'd like to step 'off point' for a while and to cool my feet on dew-covered grass.

Some time soon this extended crazy period will reach a place of pause, but my hunch is 'not yet'. According to my dear friend and mentor LB, tomorrow - 7 August - is going to be one of my year's "energetic epicentres." Oh-oh. My seatbelt's been fastened for a while already - I'm not sure there are any spare notches, buckles or straps left to tighten. I suspect it may pay not to stray too far from home and to make sure my high-pitched yellow whistle still works?

When in doubt, work, walk or sleep? Each of these three have similar effects; they both refresh and energize. And... when you can't sleep, it's helpful to do something impractical or indulgent to distract yourself, right? Right. Well, baking probably doesn't exactly fit this description (?!) but last night I made a lemon meringue pie for my two hungry sons and me. It was seriously scrummy. If you like lemon meringue (do you pronounce it mah-ring-goo, too?) this is probably a recipe you'll want to try. This piffle-y little corner wedge is all that's left of it!

LEMON MERINGUE PHI

180g plain biscuits, crushed

90g butter, melted

1 x 400g tin condensed milk

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tspns cornflour

3 eggs, separated

1/2 cup castor sugar

(oh, and if you like soft, chewy mah-ring-goo - as opposed to crisp and crumbly - sprinkle in a small teaspoon of cornflour when you add the castor sugar to the stiffly beaten egg whites)

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.

To make the crust, combine the first two ingredients, press into a pie dish and refrigerate.

Warm the condensed milk with the lemon juice and cornflour, stirring till the mixture begins to thicken. Remove from the heat and whisk in the beaten egg yolks. Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 1o minutes.

Meantime, beat the egg whites till stiff then add the castor sugar and beat till shiny. Spoon the meringue on top of the lemon filling and return to the oven for another 15 mins or so.

*

While the pie's cooling, unpack a cupboard, fold some laundry or get on with your painting...

The pic below shows the ground I've been laying for the first of my new 'maps' series. You can tell there's a way to go yet, but a fair bit has arrived on the page during the space of the last five days. While I was cleaning my brushes and getting my work bench organized for an early start tomorrow morning, I was suddenly struck by the way mathematics finds its way into my paintings. I don't plan it this way; it simply happens.

This might sound a little off-beat but Phi is my studio muse for now. What an accommodating and challenging studio companion! Phi's here and not here, intangible and an experience at one and the same time. Phi inspires; it coaxes calm out of chaos, introduces harmony and lyricism to dissonance and disorder. Phi is discreet and dependable; it does not violate my space or intrude in my thought processes. Phi facilitates the creative process, respects my need for quiet and does not presume it has a right to clamber into my head to see - or seize - what's in there. Phi does not rifle through my papers or attempt to take over my world. What more could a person ask for from a muse?

When I stepped back to take an end-of-day look at this painting - Waters I have known - it dawned on me that it has sixteen 'windows into weather'. As it happens, I immigrated to New Zealand sixteen years ago. There's an underlying grid of 7 x 7 'pages' = 49. I am 49 for another fifteen days. There are a number of other mathematical 'coincidences.'

It occurs to me that I'm painting a 49-year chapter to a close. Of course, there's a new chapter on the other side of the membrane; a whole new volume about to come into being. Perhaps it'll tell a story of joyful emancipation? I hope so. Meantime, I'm standing on the threshold - a liminal space that feels every bit as poignant and perplexing as it is potent.

Waters I Have Known (process - detail) CB August 2010