“The Tree” in this series, represents the individual person or our society in general.
The Tree Between Two Doors
Month: August 2021
Concrete Abstract 1
To see how this one was made, go to Art Methods, and scroll down to this picture.
Black Plate Mandala
This is a natural “mandala”: crystals which formed overnight from a salt on a wiped black dinner plate. (It’s a similar process to the “Perfectly Imperfect Mandala” explained in the Art Methods ), except that the photo of this one had only very slight editing, whereas the other one had a lot of cutting and pasting)
Best viewed larger to see the pattern on the counter.
Sidetracks
When I looked up the word sidetracks on Google, I was surprised to find that almost all of the definitions – at least as far as I went – were very negative! I had not thought of it that way when I made this pic, far from it, although I must admit that sometimes getting sidetracked is not a good thing! For me, however, I think of it more as the times when I have discovered something wonderful which I would have missed if I had just kept going on the route on which I started out .
Then I discovered a website called Wordhippo, which I had not encountered before, and my faith in thesaurus-type sites has been restored! Thank you, hippo, for reminding me of all the pleasures that footpaths, back streets, lanes, pathways, trails, wynds and so on have brought me in my life. And, getting sidetracked, I learnt what ginnels, snickets and twittens are!
In remembrance of places which no longer exist
Have you ever gone back, many years later, to visit a building where you once lived, or simply a place which you loved, perhaps as a child or in your travels, only to find it has been demolished and you never knew?
Whenever you thought about it, maybe even decades after you left, it never occurred to you that maybe it no longer existed!
And people…. it’s a bit of a shock sometimes to find out, perhaps from an old friend, that someone you lost touch with over the years, maybe someone you went to school with or worked with, has been dead for many years, but if you thought of them, you imagined them going on just as they were in those days.
Such an experience really brings home the knowledge that the pictures we hold onto, in our minds, of people and places (or events) may be very much our own imagination and not fact!
More about the method in Art Methods, zoom down to this picture.
Sunflower, yellow
From the Sunflower series : Sunflower , yellow.
This was the first of a series which I made from photos of sunflowers, one of my favorite flowers. This one, festooned with spiderwebs, was in the garden of friends.
Each of the series has, behind the sunflower, two circular designs reminiscent of mandalas, some religious, some cultural. The pattern on the top left is very similar to the pattern of sunflower seedheads.
Why-Why
This is a kind of digital “collage” of seven or more pieces, created by rubbing crayons over parts of various objects in my home, objects from my travels or family things. Each piece of paper on which a pattern appears is then saturated with water-colours around the crayon, and the whole thing assembled as a collage, sometimes physically, but in this case, digitally!
Why-why refers to Y-Y, the Ying Yang symbol in the centre! 🙂
Tangled Garden : Pasqueflower seedhead
From the Tangled Garden Series : Pasqueflower Seedhead
Wych Tree
from the Tree as Symbol Series Wych Tree
In this series, remember, The Tree can represent the Individual and /or Society.
In this picture, it may apply to either or both, and speaks to the acknowledgement of the Truths of Nature alongside, or even replacing, old texts.
BUT on the green side, the texts have not completely disappeared! Nor should they. Our society increasingly acknowledges the need to work with nature instead of against it, and for many individuals, old religious or mythological texts are being reinterpreted in light of today’s understanding. However, to understand our past, we do need our old texts, perhaps alongside our new ones or new interpretations of the ancient ones, so we are able to progress; we need access to our history to be able to understand our present and to help us plan for the future.
We need both . . . you may notice the Y- Y dots on either side!