Don’t Turn Your Back. Some say don’t turn your back. The earth, The sea, The mother of us all. Our birthplace, our creator. No, don’t turn your back on the one that is all. The father and the mother the one that we kill— Destroy in our haste.
We are lost— or mostly so if time is not ours to have.
Forward must be forward not to lose any longer. Do not turn your back. We can not turn our back. The beginning was too precious.
The initial inspiration for my latest series of paintings and drawings was the visual experience of the seaside. The distant distortions that manifest in the oddest ways. The shoreline, the clouds, the ships and sailboats, a bunch of kites scratching away at the sky. And the experience is heightened because all of your senses are in overload. But inevitably the working surface dictates what will be. A bit of cut paper from the studio floor finds its way on. A drawn line will always tell its own tale, but all the while the ocean experience is there nudging the story.
A Shape so Real
We look but know
we see what is not.
The light refracts.
Our eyes perceive
a shape so real,
a distant shore,
perhaps a ship
of monstrous size,
or structures at
the edge of – what?
A mountain floats
among the clouds.
Never mind,
a kite will tie all.
Photos, like any other visual art form, can be abstract or have an abstract quality. Because I’ve been working almost exclusively abstract in my other mediums it’s difficult to not notice abstract compositions everywhere I look. The following works are photo clips of just some of those hard to miss compositions. Enjoy.
Abstractish (William Bushell)
You may glimpse it as you walk by.
A curving line
a colour arc.
Shadowy shapes
made by light
or a vertical monument
of no known origin.
The roadway has some
art tales to tell
with scratchy surface
and a rich yellow mark.
A ship may offer up
a curving bow
or a line of cable
stretching down.
Have you seen the window pane
with louvered cover just to the side
a composition on it’s own
and the little group of
glass and light.
A dark dark spot
just there, on the right
drilling a hole
in the picture.
Look at all
with
eyes
anew.
The roads, parking lots, sidewalks and curbs, gritty and utilitarian as they are, can be surprisingly beautiful and expressive. A streak of road tar or a splash of paint or maybe a combination of that and the edge of a curb has been capturing my eye. I have been compulsively searching for compositions that seem to be cropping up everywhere I walk or drive. Camera in hand I have been moving from squiggle to mark, almost a danger to myself, as I dodge traffic at times to get that next frame. It’s an on going thing and the current result has been a book of some of the images called “Road Works” and hopefully a show in the near future.