Martin Buber and the Ash tree

   

oil on canvas.

It was in fact whilst searching my mind for a phrase to add to a description of the work of Daniel Lefranc at La Tour Montsales that I remembered I and Thou by Martin Buber. It was only today that I started to think again about that relationship that he described. whilst I sought to resolve this painting of the Red Ash in my garden.

Tout ce qui tient à l’arbre y est impliqué : sa forme et son mécanisme, ses couleurs et ses substances chimiques, ses conversations avec les éléments du monde, et ses conversations avec les étoiles, le tout enclos dans une totalité.

I contemplate a tree. I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of blue silver ground. I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, thriving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air – and the growing itself in the darkness. 

I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life. I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law – those laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate. 

I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it. Throughout all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition. But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, then as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me. 

This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused. Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colours and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars – all this in its entirety. 

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it – only differently. One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity. Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.

Five pieces of garden.

oil on board. 114x40cm

oil on board 110x40cm

oil on paper 68x55cm

ink, oil, emulsion on paper 65x50cm

ink,oil,emulsion on paper 65x50cm

One never really knows when something from the past will catch up. Some time ago I made some small paintings which I thought might lead on to something but it didn't seem to be the case. Over the last few weeks those ideas may have caught me up as have drawings that I made some thirty years ago. Not the same drawings but the same sense of drawing. This is part of the richness of making things. One moves forward one hopes but at the same time carry dormant ideas into the light of the present.

Landscape is by no means permanent.

Of course it isn't and just working on these drawings and paintings reminds me that everything shifts. New islands appear old ones submerge : marks on the surface also undergo transformation. The difference is that we are trying to create something stable out of the chaos; a new thing. I see my garden and I see the drawing take place which is of that garden but pared away, moved around, composed and erased - and wait while I go and cut that hedge again, mow that path again, so that when I look again it is my drawing and my drawing is it.

Work in progress

oil on board 85x54 cm

oil on board 56x40 cm

oil on board 56x40cm

oil on board 36x20cm

oil on paper. 78x60 cm

ink, charcoal, emulsion on paper.120x110cm

Very different pieces in progress at the moment. The drawing is tentatively entitled The bush in the rain.
The upper paintings are a move away from the descriptive/figurative work that has been the result of repeatedly engaging with the subject of the bush. I felt pressure to break from that and I intend to push on with this to see where it leads.
I must just mention La Tour, Montsales, Aveyron in France. There is a truly lovely exhibition there at the moment, a Tapestry show, but with baskets, photographs, small scale very fine tapestry and three dimensional work from Scotland and France. The website can be found at www.galerielatourmontsales.com. Two weeks left of the current show.

One blog at a time.

field. oil on paper.

bush, morning, oil on paper

                                                       salabert, bush, oil on paper . 78x60 cm

I would like to draw attention to Painting Perceptions, an American blog. I have no connection to it but it is something that I pay attention to. There are a number of very interesting writings about painting on the web; Painter's Table is another one: Sharon Knettell writes  informative, personal and challenging pieces on Painting from Life. The work featured differs markedly from my own but I feel that there is a lot to learn from differing view points and a great deal of commonality too.

Apparently blogging is old hat: instagram is the way forward. See for yourselves.

I'm off to mow a few paths.

Here lies the body of Ezra Pound.

                                    painting for my mother revised. oil on canvas. 100x80cms.

Lost at sea and never found.  Which is what it feels like this morning after what I thought to have been a productive session . I knocked over a few things and found the bottom two paintings which then made me look at a whole bunch of things made previously but misplaced. I think that I prefer them.

Early summer trunk.

oil on canvas. 50x50cm

oil on canvas. 30x30cm

I am ducking reworking a larger painting which has already been repainted several times. I am being cowardly and I know it: I thought that I had finished ( Painting for my mother ) but I know it won't do so in the meantime worked on these two: restarting the bigger piece and doing a lot of sitting down, getting up, looking at the bush, the light and dark, trying to remember my mother, being quite sure that I don't know enough about her or how she thought or for that matter how she lived brings me to the brush, the material of the paint and an odd mental juxtaposition  that whilst the painting is not a metaphor for loss, it is about change and about the only thing over which I have control.