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

Blogs

13/11/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture

Various versions in no particular order

Picture
Picture

...starting to try to graduate the light and adding texture...

Picture

Working with a palette knife...

Picture
Picture
I’ve just been inspired by someone else’s blog.  I’ve had one here and on Wordpress for over a year now but somehow hardly ever post.  Who ever reads them?  To be honest I’m really not much able to write about what I do.

And while I am writing I’m not painting…

But here was a blog written by another painter which was interesting and visual. So here I am.

Not a lot to say today except that a painting got sold.  And while I’m here I may as well give a history of it.


It was March 2012. Olympic Sailing year in Dorset and a warm spring so I heaved the easel and all the paraphernalia outside into the garden under the tamarisk tree.

All winter I had walked along the beach watching the sea changes, fascinated by the far off industrial shapes of the Portland breakwater and Chequered Fort and especially by the way the sea glows at sunset as though it’s a piece of rippling silk satin with the peach pink and orange light warming the distant decaying buildings.

I can’t exactly remember which versions of the painting happened in which order but I remember the extreme pleasure of mapping out and simplifying those shapes I’d been watching for so long.

They are on the left side of this text and show some of the changes the painting went through.


I regret the boats.  It was enough really that the breakwater streamed across the canvas in its enigmatic and puzzling way.  But then I had to add boats?  Why? Was I so cowardly to imagine it was not understandable or readable unless there was some narrative – i.e. the sailing boats?

Well. The boats got added and taken away and added and then left and after 2 years someone has loved it and bought it – has taken my beloved wallflower child and made her a star.  You’ll never know how warm and happy that makes me feel.




1 Comment

    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