ANGELAGOODMANART
  • Home
  • Landscapes
  • Sea and coast
  • Portraits
  • Illustrations
  • Life studies
  • Lion of Larkhall
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog

blog

Picture
It was during the dream time. The time when we were suspended between universes, between light and dark, life and death. The time when I saw the falling star and the fox.
 
The world was in semi-sleep and dreaming, but as always with dreams, the dark mares flitted with manes like black water, through consciousness and unconsciousness. Tales of horror and trauma infiltrated those almost silent sunshine days. Echoes of far off battles, corridors and machinery, exhausted running feet, precious breath, the push of the ventilator and the beeping of monitors… the valiant and the dead… yes that was there, even in the quiet of the night and even in our deepest sleep. We were there, and not there.
 
Death waited in the touch and in the breath.
 
I had trouble sleeping. Woke at four each morning with heart pounding, and speeding, circling, go-nowhere thoughts. Fear prowled the room. What if. What if. Guilt blacked out all hope of dawn and made the future dark. I was alive. Did I deserve it. Would it even last? What if. What if. I rose. Made tea. Tried to read. Went to a window and watched the sky to the east and waited. Weeks… months… we were all waiting, so what was one more hour, to sit and watch and wait? We also serve, who only stand. And wait.
 
I thought of the Bristol churches with their watch towers looking eastwards, the faithful watching and waiting for another kind of dawn.
And waited.
And looking eastwards, there it was. My first ever falling star. A lonely Lyrid, falling… falling… briefly a light to our world.  Out there was hope perhaps.
 
As the sky greyed, things took form outside.
 
A moving shadow caught my gaze. It stopped. A glow of white fur under the body and face. Darkly silhouetted ears, inscrutable eyes, and stillness. Our eyes met through glass: the human being, trapped inside, locked in my own darkness and the small fox out there in the dawn. And I heard her, as if she spoke to me … no… not heard… sensed?... a message without words.
 
This is not a dream.
 
There is always hope.

Picture

Pandemic

July 21st, 2013

21/7/2013

1 Comment

 
Picture
So, on July 13th, there I was....
 ...floating in the middle of the Thames looking downriver to Chelsea Bridge and Battersea Power station with the trees of the Embankment and Battersea Park on either side...

I'd paid my tenner online then at 9am on the day trudged, with easel, canvases, paints,  drinking water and sun cream, water jar and the vital langth of string string (purpose to be explained later ) to Chelsea Town Hall and got my canvas stamped with the whimsical Pintar Rapido logo. It was hot and I was nervous. 
Plein Air is terrifying for me - the unknown and unpredictable encounters with invaders of your space. I may be a Trekkie but for me random alien encounters and art don't really gel (except perhaps in the Wordsworthian sense - 'emotion recollected in tranquillity' i.e. I work best in the studio).  I need to inhabit that precious and delightfully lonely semi-conscious yet heightened zone which one inhabits when painting and which is so vital for decision making... For me the anticipation of people looking at your work mid flow shatters that before one can even reach it.  I had a cunning plan to circumvent these problems; but might something go wrong?
Meanwhile 379 artists streamed in and out of Chelsea Town Hall - all the stereotypes you could ever dream of what an artist might be like: the small wiry intense, grey bearded man with his 1960's easel and battered wooden paint-box; the tall young man - cutting edge - with the purposeful middle distance stare; the two middle-aged ladies in long cotton skirts and little sun-hats - excited and twittery about tinkling their water jars in a leafy London street. 
My plan was to avoid the frantic, luggage-laden dash for the best spots, be out of the public scrutiny, have peace to think and yet be on the river. .. Cadogan Pier was the place.  I'd been given the entry code by a friend with a houseboat... sorted!

next instalment... watch this space...

1 Comment

when the boat comes in...

4/7/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
I've heard of fish falling from
the sky; nevertheless it was a shock to find a goldfish lying on the hall carpet. 
The two cats guarding its sad, still form pretended disinterest.
However I know, dear cats, that you were only trying - in your limited way - to provide me with a 'fishy in a little dishy'.
Oddly enough, the only one for whom 'the boat' came 'in' was the fish. It magically revived in water - even allowing me to stroke its nose (probably how the cats hooked it)and next morning
flipped itself joyfully out of a plastic bag and into the nearest lake....

...long may you swim in freedom little fishy...  and may those pterodactyl-like
herons never find you.

0 Comments

    Author

    An artist on an alien planet.

    May 19th

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2015
    October 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Landscapes
  • Sea and coast
  • Portraits
  • Illustrations
  • Life studies
  • Lion of Larkhall
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog