The path winds a bit

Last  Thursday I had meeting with my tutors Mary Nagle and Sylvia Shortall and it was very enlightening. They told me that Iwas trying to move too in finishing pieces of work but I had already kind of guessed that and as I have already mentioned I felt that 'edge' was the direction for the next bend in the path.
This was the second  3D representing a stylised hilly coast-line with a railway and the contours specifically done a s edges.





                                                                                                                                                                                 

The pictures on my gallery were moving more towards edge

but they were tending to be monumental and a bit too wide- ranging in scope  so it was suggested to me that I should do some investigative photography - which I did:

 

 



Just a sample !  And no explanations at this stage!

 

 

On Friday there was a group tutorial with our studio and Studio 3 which was very unnerving but not a little simulating. A student from 3 gave me the name of an artist whose work might be relevant to my research and so it proved ; I am very grateful.

 

 

 

 

 

Any Goldsworthy's land sculpture sare very interestng and his videos are well worth watching.

 

 

More expansion on my direction of enquiry will follow

 



Rebirth

Rebirth

Yesterday we were back to the Renaissance in Italy and there was much attention to Florence. The photos of the Duomo brought me back some years to my first trip there in February 1996. The weather was cold and clear - ideal for a lot of walking and looking. Listening yesterday to the names of the churches and various buildings such as the Ospedale degli Innocenti brought it all back. I remember taking photos in the evening light of the Della Robbia roundels.

The dome of the Duomo was frascinating because we climbed to the top of it and the 'stairs'  run up inside the ribs you can see here

 

 

We were lucky to see all this so easily at that time of year because when I visited Florence again in June of a later year there were queues 500m long in the Piazza del Duomo simply to get into the Duomo itself.

 

Ghibertis' doors on the Baptistry are an absolute wonder andyou could spend a whole day just examining them; there is his head peeping out happily forever!

 

 

 

The churches of Florence are oveflowing with art but it would be a mistake to leave the Renaissance there.

 

A visit to San Sepolcro will lead you to one of the painters of the time who has stuck deeply in my consciousness - Piero della Francesca(1415-1492)

 

 

The Flagellation of Christ (1455) demonstrates his grasp of space even if there is much that is extremely strange about this picture -what are the men in the foreground discussing, while this leisurely lashing is going on behind them?

 

In 1455, he produced 'The Dream of Constantine':

 

The space and light in this are very unusual for the time.

It's probably a bit hackneyed to profess deep admiration for Sandro Botticelli(14415-1483), but that's beside the point. I have always loved this mans' work,

There is an internal glow to the skin tones that despite the age of the work, never seems to have faded, and of couse there is the face of Venus who, it appears, turns up in so much of his other work.

I will tell you more about the rails and edge orject in my next post. Some interesting things have happened.

Ps I should have included this next piece yesterday when I was writing, because I had not realised that this artist had done any work remotely like it:

 

 

This is Mary Magdalene by Donatello who would more normally be known for smoother work such as his David.

 

There is real pain here and is so realistc as to even have missing teeth.It has a far mor north European feel and could havd been done by someone like Matthias Grunewald. 





 



Ghosts

Spaces ........with no rails

This was a railway station on the line between Thurles and Carrick-on-Suir, called Laffansbridge.
So - here there are edges and rails, or the ghost of them. I was told long ago by someone who travelled this line that it was a beautiful journey.
So you see our spaces today always have that fourth dimension of time in them, in the form of memories.

Edge and rail again

 



 

 

I had to lie at the bottom of the downslope at the endod of the platform to get this picture and whil I was there I took a vdeo of a train coming in. The driver was rather puzzled to see me lying on the ground.

 

 



 

In the course of my reading over the weekend I came across a piece about Lee Miller, and in following up on her I discovered that when she was working with Man Ray in Paris before WWII she produced a surrealist photographic work with a very interesting title:

Portrait of Space

Some background reading would produce overt sexual interpretation.,

So space, as we are seeing, can mean many different thing to different people..... as can edge.

It occurred to me as I wwalked from the station the other morning that this place was the edge of life:

 

Think about that till I come back.

More Scenery on the Path

Today we had our our first CCS lecture on the early Renaissance.

The point was made about the differences of opinion there are as to when this wonderful resurgence of intellectual and artistic vitality really began but when you look at this madonna by Giotto, you would have to say that despite the retrenchment that followed, he really was the man.

 

 

Paintings from the end of the Roman Empire and particularly those from Byzantium would appear to be a model for this wonderful picture.

 

 



This Is Omphale,Queen of Lydia, from the time of Augustus.

 

It is hard to believe that a hundred years later Gentile Da Fabriano had retreated so far as to be painting a scene that, while it is no doubt extremely accomplished, has nothing like the depth of perception that is evident in Giotto's work.

 

 

 



 





This journey will be wonderful.

Space and Edge

Coming back to now from the Quattrocento, its time to give a little run-down on where I am going with the project:

To Sense My Space

The rails are still central but other concepts are shouldering , or should I say edging, their way in.
The word margin appeared in a mind map from Rogets thesaurus as but that was close enough to 'edge' for me and I suddenly realised that the idea of edge has been something that has always fascinated me.


Lets just take a quick zip back to the 50s and 60s and an art show that came to Dublin at that time called ART USA NOW and what did I see? Hard edge ..... and it was..... WOW!
Newman



                                                               






Kelly




   Noland

This was painting with an edge and for me it still is.

I forgot to mention when showing the "Mouth" earlier that another old favourite came to mind:

Claes Oldenburg and his soft sculptures.

Over the weekend I will attempt to explain what my concepst are for my project.

The Walk Begins

To-day began promisingly enough, but fell into a dispirited trough with a blank sheet staring back for an hour or so.

 The tracks seemed to be leading nowhere and the structure appeared all too apt:

Change of scene required and rather strangely the mood was lifted with a number of Edward Hopper pictures, which delighted me with their refernces to american railroads and alienation and of course, lots of undisturbed space

 

It is also true that I felt happier having seen the people in the Chair Car

 



When I returned to the studio I had a visit from a second year student who had done the same PLC as I and I think must have intuited that I might be having a bit of bother -much as she had had last year.

The ensuing discussion was brilliant!

The tracks will remain but a word that had been simmering under my conscious  suddenly bubbled up.

I had been collecting images of track and trains running along coast lines

but the word that for me describes such places, emerged, as if it had just been waiting for me:

Edge





Edge of space, edge of time, edge of land, edge of the univrese, edge of me................skin.

So edge is the separation between many different kinds of space, but with regards to me - the separation between my space and the space of other.

to be continued/

First Step of Thousand Mile Journey

First Week!

Confusion, Chaos, Turmoil!


However, I have no doubt all will be revealed in due course

Railways, which have always played a large part in my life are about to become even more central

Leading in......leading out


Access! Major triumph over the malign forces of technology....... and so the train comes in for this evening