fragile & fleeting

iced river surface

I'm at last reconciled to not having a shelter anymore. I've detached myself from the attachment-and-loss-syndrome, and it feels good. From now on (until I build another shelter...) I shall regard the total environment within easy walking distance of home as my 'studio'. That's only right, since it's the place where I study, and where I test-out ideas and follow lines of investigation.

iced river rock

Today I set about a rather obvious thought, and not at all original. It was all about beauty, how it can never be captured, and how it is so fragile and temporary. The frost was sparkling on twigs for a few moments, erect and proud, when the sun's rays flooded in, and then that same sun overwhelmed those thrusts of frost and their sparkle melted away into dark damp patches. These events, tiny in the scale of the immense universe, but immense in the tiny world of the twig, reminded me to be mindful in the moment, to love, dance, sing, laugh and enjoy whilst I still can.

I've been looking at the Lichfield and Lindisfarne gospels, the Lutteral Psalter and the Book of Kells again recently. There's no doubt in my mind that those monks working away in their cold dark cells were like shamans. They saw real and imagined beauty in the connectedness of the universe and transported it through their inks and parchment into our own times. I want my own artwork to attempt the same but in a secular context. I'm reminded, however, of the rather portentous and pompous lines of William Blake:

He who binds himself a joy
doth the winged life destroy
but he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in eternity's sunrise.