Holy Place

On the day before Christmas Eve when the snow, ice and clear blue skies cast away the feeling of cold and festivities are almost here, a stroll away from the madness can bring us to a moment frozen in time.



Newtown Churchyard

This is believed to be one of Ireland's Holy places. A Church or Monastic settlement has existed above the banks of the Borora River for many centuries. Usher's Visitation of 1622 describes the ancient church and chancel "as in ruins". The roofless building seen here in the churchyard was erected in the late 18th century.

Theme: Time Gone By

Dark.
It was always dark.
The snow covering the earth.
       I remember it always covering the earth during the dark winters.
       I remember the snow.
    Lights filled the windows of the houses around ours. Red, green, blue, yellow and white, of course white, like the stars in the sky.
    I often lay on the ground, wearing snowsuit to keep the cold away, my nose red like Rudolf's.
    I often lay there staring up at the stars wondering what I'd be doing ten years from then.
    20 years from then.
    30 ...
And I tried counting the stars while making snow angels.
    Then I just lay there still until the cold crept up on me through the thick clothing, watching the northern lights play with themselves.
    Eventually I had to jump up and leave the stars and the lights, always attempting to jump so that the angel wouldn't be ruined.
    There could be no footprints where the snow angel was supposed to be.
    If there were steps it was a failed angel.
    A fallen angel.
Afterwards I guess I went inside and continued to wait anxiously for Christmas to arrive. I would stand in the window and look down on my snow angel, the beautiful white snow angel that was sometimes even prettier when it had fallen...
    ...sometimes steps in the snow still remind me of those days.

Day 2.5

“The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”

Hang about. Forgot something.

And the gods (for He can split into many when duty calls) stepped forward and touched the trees and the branches and the twigs. And leaves sprung forth: broad, narrow, prickly, elliptic. Different and interesting. Yet all were green – green to contrast the two previous days of blue water and white light only. And the branches shook with pleasure and pride, they whispered amongst themselves, ‘look at us, look at us, we shine with the virtuous natures of this world; green is the colour of goodness, surely.’

The gods stood back and thought. Hmm.

YOU HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN THE WORD, they said (in one voice for they agree as One, of course), THAT IS FOR LATER CHAPTERS ONLY.

The trees shook again, this time from the winds of godly bellow, and from plain fear: ‘the cruelty! Do not take our murmurs away from us – we could not bear silence now we know the pleasures of free discourse!’

Hmm. In fairness, it seemed churlish to withdraw a godly gift, once granted.

YOU MUST LEARN TO MODERATE YOUR BEHAVIOUR – THE WORD IS SAVED FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, AS YOU SHALL SEE IN A FEW DAYS.

The trees trembled at this and therefore had to whisper with it. ‘Sorry!’ they called but that only made it worse and their apologetic rustlings echoed through the world. Clearly they can’t regulate themselves, He thought. Bother. And with many arms he once again reached out to touch the offending items: one by one, the leaves began to fall to the ground.

‘The green, the green, it’s going, it’s gone!’ the trees cried but you could hardly hear them at all by now.

RELAX. I’LL LET YOU HAVE YOUR SAY HALF THE TIME. THE OTHER HALF, YOU SHALL JUST HAVE TO STAY QUIET.

‘But our colour!'

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

THERE, He sighed – and the leaves on the ground and the leaves in the air and the leaves yet to fall from the branches turned brown or russet or auburn or yellow or red or all those colours at once; like tiny sunsets floating downwards.

THERE; NO GREEN TO REGRET. AND IT’LL COME BACK NEXT TIME ROUND, I PROMISE.

At any rate, it was too late to hear any further complaints. Silence everywhere. And some good ideas had presented themselves to the divine mind: seasons and suns and moons – something to break up monotonies and add colour too. As luck would have it, the falling leaves had also been rather beautiful.

Sketchjournal 19/11/09

A cross-post from my personal blog, Omphaloskepsis.

"Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay." ~ Robert Browning

Last night I finally sat down to sketch a leaf I picked up about a week ago. Pressed between the pages of my sketchjournal, it was temporarily spared the fate of crumbling into dust (the fate of so many other leaves my little girl and I have brought home over these autumn months) and I was able to paint it in light washes of gouache and, for the patches of green, Victorian Gold acrylic.

This shimmery gold-green paint was purchased on a recent trip to an art materials shop in Cambridge, where I also bought some coppery gold-leaf flakes. I plan to experiment with both of these in my oil pastel paintings.

We are on the cusp of that dark, dread season where the reds and russets and yellows of autumn are lost, crumbled, trampled, rotted and gone for another year. During the bleaker months, we are left to create our own colours, and must conjure shimmer and sparkle and light however we can.

Season Colour - Frost

No matter what the mood, no matter what the troubles, there are times of the year you have to jump out of bed and get outside when there is a possible hint of those unique season colours.

And you can never be sure, because the night before is no guarantee, you just have to be ready!

November Morning

Show me golden bronze, with white peeping through
Play me crisp crunch green, with tracks left behind
Blow me light chill air, cross skin with pale hue
Leave me musical thoughts, from the birds to remind.

Season colour ...

For the briefest time in October, this little tree burned a joyous and fiery red.

I hastily took a couple of photos with my phone camera, realising it was starting to shed its leaves heavily on the damp autumnal ground and that its colour was soon to be lost for another year.Those snapshots have inspired an oil pastel painting, which I've been playing around with this week.

Today, the tree had gone; cut down, it would appear, since yesterday. I just wanted to share my sadness!

Theme #1 - Season Color

You are hereby invited...

You are hereby invited to join this cooperative project, synergic art.

Themes will be posted regularly and I invite you to do your interpretation of the theme. It can be whatever you like, whatever you want it to be. A photograph, a poem, prose, painting, drawing, comic or whatever it is you call art. The only limitation is the limit your mind and your computer poses.

There are at least two ways to participate. You can post a comment underneath the original post or you can choose to join in on a more permanent basis and get access to this blog so you can come up with themes too and post individual entries.

This is a new project and I'm open to any suggestions and contributions you have to offer. This is an open book with empty pages. Fill them as you will...

I suggest that you host any pictures you'd like to post here for yourself where you have control over them and can take them down if and when you like. This blog may present certain limitations so if you know of a better way to do this suggestions are welcome.

I will post the first theme shortly and I hope you are willing to join me in this.

If you'd like to join on a permanent basis leave a comment here and I'll give you access to this blog. Lets co-operate...!

p.s. I chose the whitest theme I could find and since the outside is important we'll start with that. If you are a magic-maker of html you are welcome with your art.