larger than life

i met paterson ewen in the late nineteen seventies while he was visiting peter robinson college at trent university. he brought some of his work with him - work gouged and hacked out of plywood almost as if he was digging to find what he somehow knew was inside there, tucked away inside the splintering fibres.

here's what the virtual museum has to say about this particular work by patterson:

"paterson ewen created this monumental work after seeing an iceberg for the first time. in addition to painting on a plywood surface, he gouges it away with power tools to create rough textures. to ewen, the literal physicality of the painting mirrors the iceberg’s formation, which occurs in a violent tearing away of ice masses from arctic shores. “it was amazing how the iceberg itself came about. the actual physical movement I make sometimes feels analogous to the way the things really happen.”"



patterson's digging and carving beneath the smooth wooden surface revealed riches and a truthfullness that though - raw and unpolished - resonated with some similar process that has accompanied my own efforts to access the truthfullness of myself. to somehow, gradually and painstakingly reveal little-by-little who and what is actually here. the spirit, behind the finished skin of my personality.

light plays

i love the way that light plays inside translucent objects like glass or ice. it reminds me of how light plays inside people.

charles baudelaire wrote:
"all forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory -- of the absolute and of the particular. absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. the particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty."

these particular "abstractions" were "creamed from the general surface" at the ice sculpture festival in ottawa this february.

the full value of joy

i've never really liked fences.

they divide and contain.

they separate us from experiences.

they create otherness.



even a cursory examination of my self reveals fences. fences that keep things in. fences that keep things out. fences to straddle.

it's as much work to maintain them as it is to take them down.

even a moment's thought reveals how unnecessary and harmful this all is.

so why do i need to do this?

where did i learn to be protective. to deny. to be prepared to run from my vantage point.

how do i let all of this go?