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Landscapes of Soul

“It the greatest error of our Society that many of the metaphysical assumptions of wiser ages than our own are presented as jokes to amuse children. The landscapes of poetry, the landscapes of great painters are not to be found in nature at all. It is false doctrine that sees them in terms of m

aterialism. They are landscapes of the soul, and the imagery is not an end but a means-a language for discoursing upon realities of the intelligible world, not the physical world. The theme of imaginative art is not physical but metaphysical. It is in the soul that their validity lies, not in nature. It is the poet and painter’s task to perfect a language of correspondences…The poetic secret is to find in nature the images that correspond to the already and forever existing landscape of the eternal world.”

—Kathleen Raine, ‘Poetry in Relation to Traditional Wisdom.’ (March, 1958)

 

 

Merz SHED II

INTRODUCTION

“A poet writes always of his personal life; in his finest work out of its tragedy, whatever it be, remorse, lost love, or mere loneliness; he never speaks directly as to someone at the breakfast table, there is always a phantasmagoria…Even when the poet seems most himself, when he is Raleigh and gives potentates the lie, or Shelley ‘a nerve o’er which do creep the else unfelt oppressions of this earth,’ or Byron ‘and the soul wears out the breast’ as ‘the sword outwears its sheath,’ he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.”

–From ‘A General Introduction for my Work’, W.B.Yeats.

The panels are expressive, with concentrated moods. It contains biographical ephemera, humorous fragments?, some serious social commentary and a dose of spirituality. It is drawing on on realist, expressionist as well as Byzantine traditions. You could say it is a mix-up of colour and image; a kaleidoscopic collage.

The collage is packed full of detail. Swirls of red and yellow encaustic wax, with blue & sap green. Dammar crystals ground.

When did it begin?

The project was planned on Thursday 10th February 2011, and I became  enthusiastic about using encaustic wax with collage.

 

Art, Imagination & Thomas Traherne

I

‘All things were pure and glorious…I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of povertie, contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Every thing was at rest, free and immortal.’

‘I was entertained like an angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory. I saw all the peace of Eden. Heaven and Earth did sing…’

Thomas Traherne, The Centuries of Meditations, III.2

“Thomas Traherne once asked: ‘Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir to the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold’. And yet Traherne did not doubt this was in fact. Traherne never forgot what he himself had seen as a child:

The late A.M. ‘Donald’ Allchin, who founded the <a href="https://thomastraherneassociation.org/">Thomas Traherne Association</a> with Rev. Richard Birt
The late A.M. ‘Donald’ Allchin, who founded the Thomas Traherne Association with Rev. Richard Birt

‘The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor ever was sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting…Eternity was manifest in the light of day, and some thing infinite behind every thing appeared, which talked with my expectation and moved my desire.’
” The Centuries of Meditations, III.3

From ‘Landscapes of Glory’ edited by the late A.M.Allchin

II

“Cecil Collins says that there is no meaning in life or art ‘excepting that which springs from the immortal surreality of that Eternal Person’. The artist and the poet must embody ‘the eternal virginity of spirit, which in the dark winter of the world, continually proclaims the existence of a new life, gives faithful promise of the spring of an invisible Kingdom, and the coming of light’. Art seen in this way, is a channel of grace providing a link between the visible and invisible realities.” —Peter Fuller, Modern Painters magazine, Vol 2, no 2, 1989

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