It is two in the morning, and I am writing because I need to.
Yesterday I put the finishing touches to a picture on which I have been working intermittently for some time. It has resisted any sense of completion until now; but the details fell suddenly into place. It is now on the pin-board in the studio. There is nothing on the easel. For some reason I am asking myself when might be the next time I am going to use it.
The picture is one of a series to which I have given the general title Beyond.* This one will probably bear the title Beyond Stanage, because it is based on Stanage Edge in Derbyshire. The pictures in the series have a common characteristic, in that they feature glimpses of some place glimpsed between gaps in rocky features. The idea originated several years ago during a holiday in the Orkney Islands, where a characteristic of the coastal landscape is the deep fissures cutting into the coastal cliffs, known locally as “geos”. The defining idea, I think, probably refers in my mind to time as well as to space. Some indescribable situation of light and peace lies “over there”, beyond the obdurate and troubled hear and now. Meanwhile …. I endure.
I do not know exactly what it was that stimulated each of the items in the series, other than momentary recognition of something in the landscape that held my attention. What I do understand is that collectively they speak to and of my condition at this moment.
My wife and I have lived in our house now for more then twenty years. We moved in even before our marriage, and it is the only home we have shared, as “ours”. For some time now we have been conscious of the fact that, now we are both in our seventies, the place is not well-suited to old age. As we entered the New Year we agreed that we would begin to explore the possibility of moving to somewhere more convenient, and have begun to take steps to realise that goal.
Quite suddenly, “beyond” has come to stand metaphorically for the reality of my life, in many ways and at several levels. I have to admit that this is not a comfortable state of mind in which to live. Frankly, it is deeply troubling …. which is probably why I am writing this now. It will not be surprising if this theme remains a recurring one in this blog for some time, even as it has run through my painting in the past. What does lie “beyond”?
*The rest of the series is in a “gallery” of that title, elsewhere in this website.