Friday, October 29, 2010

Corexit



Penelope sent me this link this afternoon - - - accounts of the health hazards associated with Corexit. This makes for depressing reading, but how can we not?

FLORIDA OIL SPILL LAW - Documenting the Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.


Breastplate_It is all one water - a finger in a tide pool brings our shores together
with text by Marylinn Kelly
2010
Oil & pencil on paper
560 x 380MM



Breastplate_And the sea on their right, how she murmurs
with text by Pamela Morrison
2010
Oil & pencil on paper
560 x 380MM (v x h)





Saturday, October 16, 2010

Standing in the Heart



As the exhibition's opening date approached, friends from the blogging community came on board with this project, many contributing texts for inclusion in the Waters I Have Known series. The responses in Standing in the Heart - An Ocean of Words -  relate specifically to the themes of 'oceans and community'. 

You can follow the threads of this conversation by clicking on the link below -    




STANDING IN THE HEART   |   A Communal Breastplate  & Ocean of Words
2010
Transcribed texts - pencil on gessoed paper









Friday, October 15, 2010

BREASTPLATE III_Rebecca



Breastplate III_And what did she see at the sea (text by Rebecca Loudon)
Oil & pencil on paper
2010
520 x 380MM



and what did she see at the sea

Dire Whelk
Dusky Tegula
Fingered Limpit
Hooded Puncturella
Veiled Chiton
Bat Star
By-the-Wind Sailor
Crumb-of-bread Sponge
Eye Fringed Worm
Sugar Wrack
Frilled Anemone
Bull Kelp
Ghost Shrimp
Sanderling
Walleye Surfperch
Volcano Barnacle
Stiff-footed Sea Cucumber
Leather Star
Innkeeper Worm
Lug Worm

REBECCA LOUDON






details




Monday, October 11, 2010

BREASTPLATES (process)



These small paintings on heavy cotton paper have as their compositional 'template' the turtle shell,
a form that references the Gulf crisis and suggests to me the following - 


breastplate
protective shield
sacred space
shelter
multi-chambered heart


each of which we do well to take care of


Breastplate I - Turtle Talk (detail/process)
G  ULF series
Oil on paper
2010



Breastplate II_Let us not forget the silver-headed minnows - (detail/process)








Fini


Breastplate II_Battaglia ii_Let us not forget the silver-headed minnows
Oil & pencil on paper
2010
520 x 380MM



Twenty days, twenty ways



studio process . . .

















details






Fini


Twenty Days, Twenty Ways 
Image portals for Waters I Have Known
The Diversion, Marlborough
2010
Oil on gessoed board
910 x 910MM



Sunday, October 10, 2010

Group Dynamic



Process. . . 




I initially thought the painting was finished at this stage, but the longer I lived with it, the more lonesome these images seemed. I realized they were asking for company - a community to wrap around them, to give them purpose and meaning. . .







details







Fini



Group Dynamic
Image portals for Waters I Have Known
2010
Oil on board
910 x 910MM



Friday, September 24, 2010

Ice Lines





from the series WATERS I HAVE KNOWN_Ice Lines i
Oil on paper
2010
760 x 1050 MM (v x h)
This work is available from The Diversion
THIS WORK HAS SOLD



AT HOME IN ANTARCTICA

In this place, silence has a voice 
wide-ranging as the continent. 
Some say it's on the cusp 
of madness, the way it hums 
and stutters, mutters to itself 
in quietest tones. 

In this place, the universe 
brims. Inside absence,
presence. Inside distance, 
dust and our sleeping earth
dreaming beneath her thin blue
mask of ice. 

In this place, the necessity 
of memory, recollections
of a loved one's face, shape
of laughter, weight of breath. 

In this place, nostalgia 
roams, patient as slow
hands on skin transparent
as melt-water. Nights are light
and long. Shadows settle
on the shoulders of air. 

Time steps out of line 
here stops to thaw
the frozen hearts of icebergs. 
Sleep isn't always easy in this place
where the sun stays up all night
and silence has a voice. 


CB - Explorers Cove, Taylor Dry Valleys, Antarctica 2005




detail i



Wednesday, September 22, 2010

G ULF_Oil and Water Do Not Mix




G ULF_Oil and Water Do Not Mix
Oil & pencil on paper
2010
760 x 525 MM (v x h)
This work is available from The Diversion




OIL AND WATER DO NOT MIX
DO NOT MIX OIL AND WATER
OIL AND WATER DO NOT MIX
DO NOT MIX OIL AND WATER
OIL AND WATER DO NOT MIX
DO NOT MIX OIL AND WATER
OIL AND WATER DO NOT MIX
DO NOT MIX OIL AND WATER
OIL AND WATER DO NOT MIX

OIL AND WATER
DO NOT MIX

DO NOT MIX
OIL AND WATER

DO

NOT

MIX

OIL

AND

WATER




Detail i


Detail ii



Sunday, September 19, 2010

G_ULF - Surely Some Revelation Is At Hand?




G_ULF - Surely Some Revelation Is At Hand?
Oil and pencil on paper
2010
760 x 560MM (v x h)
  


". . . Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand. . . ?"

W. B Yeats
from The Second Coming





detail



Friday, September 17, 2010

G_ULF_Luminescing When Dusk Comes




G_ULF_Luminescing When Dusk Comes
Oil & pencil on paper
2010
760 x 560MM (v x h)




". . .We and many other animals sleep and wake in cycles that repeat every twenty-four hours. Some ocean protists, dinomastigotes, luminesce when dusk comes, ceasing two hours later. So hooked are they into the cosmic rhythm of Earth that even back in the laboratory, away from the sea, they know the sun has set. Many similar examples abound because living matter is not an island but part of the cosmic matter around it, dancing to the beat of the universe.

Life is a material phenomenon so finely tuned and nuanced to its cosmic domicile that the relatively minor shift of angle and temperature change as the tilted Earth moves in its course around the sun is enough to alter life’s mood, to bring on or silence the song of bird, bullfrog, cricket and circada. But the steady background beat of Earth turning and orbiting in its cosmic environment provides more than a metronome for daily and seasonal lives. Larger rhythms, more difficult to discern, can also be heard. . ."

from What is Life? Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan  (pg. 240 & 241)





detail



Thursday, September 2, 2010

On the edge of the clearing weather





On the edge of the clearing weather
Oil on paper
2010
760 x 1050MM (v x h)
This work is available from The Arthouse
THIS WORK HAS SOLD


SOTTO VOCE

(Italian term – usually used in a musical context, meaning ‘under the voice’ or ‘in a quiet tone’)



Striking, the ambiguity of language – sound
and sound, hold
and hold, birth
and berth.

Sotto voce. Sotto voce.

Our brave boat’s hull
is a dull silver arc
at odds, and at one
with the ocean’s shifting
meniscus, the sky infinite
yet Doubtful as a clenched fist,
a menace of wishful thinking.

Mariners without local knowledge
are advised to exercise caution.

I am no old man of the sea (my stomach
one of two that pitch and turn
in 4m swells), but Lance and the Breaksea Girl
are unperturbed; back and forth she rocks
back and forth, a metronome used, by now,
to holding her own in stormy waters. 

Sotto voce. Sotto voce.

Ours is hardly the first voyage, neither will it be
the last. There are records aplenty
of this coastline, these steep, hard-nosed
mountains, the seductive tongues
of waterfalls.
           
I have scoured the record books,
wondered more about the lines not there
than the many written; nowhere
do we find Cook – or Orton –
writing of love or lust
or loneliness at sea; in the journals, no poetry
to soften the un-yielding years, the reek
of sour beer and unwashed skin,
the loud absence of women.

These men, too, must surely have known
the sudden singe of heat
on heart, the un-confided bruise?

But
who
am
I
to
make
such
assumptions?

On the edge of the clearing weather,
mountain, sky and ocean lean towards
each other with conspiratorial intention.
They are lifetimes ahead of us
the way they know how to sleep
together, dream together, lie awake
in the dark together, rarely - and always - 
alone
with their separate thoughts.

Where are we to drop anchor?

I am reluctant to interrupt this silence.




CB - Western Fiordland, New Zealand 2007/2010


detail i

detail ii

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

G ULF_Battaglia





G ULF_Battaglia
Oil on paper
2010
1050 x 760MM (v x h)
The Arthouse 
THIS WORK HAS SOLD



                        BATTAGLIA

                        oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water
                               do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix
                               oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water
                               do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix
                               oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water oil and water do not mix do not mix oil and water


                        Let us not forget the silver-headed
                        minnows, their presto con brio flash
                        and exuberant, spear-shaped shimmer.

                                See them now?

                         Their fins are barely a-flicker. Instinct
                         propels them but their once-vivid slice
                         through water is nothing but the faintest quiver.

                                See them?

                          Mouths shut tight and belly up, they might
                          easily be mistaken for cutlery clattering
                          in a rimless ocean sink.

                                 See?

                          There's no music left in them, no sound
                          stirring in this floating orchestra of cartilage
                          and bone. This was no accidental storm;

                                 ?

                         the earth recoils in disbelief, her grief
                         is deep, our indifference to her, unfathomable.
                         This is a solemn and vicious tide

                                .

                         with power to turn salt water sour; a viscous bile
                         that dulls the shining scales of fish
                         and rusts the sleeping turtle's shell.



                                 CB - on the Deepwater Horizon environmental catastrophe 
                                 April, May, June, July, August, September 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. . .







detail

G ULF_Elegy




G  ULF_Elegy for the Giant Turtles
from the poem by Margaret Atwood
Oil & pencil on paper
2010
760 x 525MM (vx h)
The work is available from The Arthouse





ELEGY FOR THE GIANT TORTOISES


Let others pray for the passenger pigeon
the dodo, the whooping crane, the eskimo:
everyone must specialize

I will confine myself to a meditation
upon the giant tortoises
withering finally on a remote island.

I concentrate in subway stations,
in parks, I can't quite see them,
they move to the peripheries of my eyes

but on the last day they will be there;
already the event
like a wave traveling shapes vision:

on the road where I stand they will materialize,
plodding past me in a straggling line
awkward without water

their small heads pondering
from side to side, their useless armour
sadder than tanks and history,

in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralyzed,
lumbering up the steps, under the archways
toward the square glass altars

where the brittle gods are kept,
the relics of what we have destroyed,
our holy and obsolete symbols.


Margaret Atwood


Margaret Atwood's website is a roomy place that, amongst its many treasures, offers generous resources for writers (ref. Negotiating with the Dead: A writer on writing). She has also included 'links of interest', photographs, media clips, podcasts of interviews, reviews, readings. . .


Remarkably, she wrote ELEGY FOR THE GIANT TORTOISES in 1968.





detail