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

May 07th, 2014

8/5/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Only a week to go before the Private View and already I've been waking up in the early morning in what I can only describe as a state of trepidation.

The painting I have uploaded here was made mostly while listening to Donna Tartt reading Secret History and took longer than the audio book took to play.  Out of all the collection, it's probably the one I am happiest with to be honest. 

My main problem is that I usually paint fast but then leave paintings for intervals - sometimes months - and then work on them some more.  In fact, painting (
when I have world enough and time) is a long process of vegetable love (slow growing) and cogitation.  Quick work is invariably not finished.  I've been known to wait over a year before being able to discover what that final colour is, which will somehow make the work complete. 

But this year I've needed to work on lots of ideas all at once.   There hasn't been time to cogitate and not much time for experiment or learning. No time to leave it all and rinse again - I've just had to paint n go.  This may have been a good thing. Maybe the work is fresher for it.  Yet now it's all at the framers and even that exposure has felt somehow raw. What if I see it framed and realise that actually it is all unfinished - all missing that final spark which is only usually earned by months of slow meditation?  What if it needs another rinse?




0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    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