Inky Leaves :: Úrsula Romero

Los Pensamientos

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 18:56:00 +0000

197 Pensamientos (thoughts) to represent every country in the world. Painted by J R Shepherd during her isolation from the Covid 19 Pandemic in 2020 whilst in her studio high up in the mountains of Granada, Spain. The piece is titled after the Spanish name for pansy as not only was Jessica in Spain during this historic moment, but the name, akin to the French 'Pensée', has a double meaning for 'thoughts'. In the language of flowers, a pansy means that someone is 'thinking of you'. Often used as a get-well flower, pansies can show that you sympathise with someone's pain and distress, in this case, a country. Each pansy in this piece has been painted individually on a 15 x 15cm square and was posted to a recipient somewhere in the world. The finished posie of 197, is the complete collection of all of these tiny paintings. Masquerading in the final piece of 200, Jessica included three imposters, who have appropriated the pansy patterns to go unnoticed.

Final piece is 300cm x 150cm

In Italy, the pansy is known as 'flammola' (little flame), and I rather like that. A little flame of hope. Hope in the dark. They are petals of nostalgia, happy flowers. Gateways, representative of the portals of our hidden transformations as we shelter in our houses from Covid-19. They are botanical butterflies.

On account of its popularity in both society and its recurring appearances in Romantic poetry, a variety of new nicknames for the flower began to circulate. Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that:

“Perhaps no flower claims to be so universal a favorite, as the viola tricolor; none currently has been honored with so rich a variety of names, at once expressive of grace, delicacy and tenderness.”

Many of these names play on the whimsical nature of love, including “Three Faces under a Hood,” “Flame Flower,” “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” “Flower of Jove,” and “Pink of my John.” In Hamlet, Ophelia distributes flowers with the remark, "There are pansies, that's for thoughts." Interestingly, Margaret Mitchell originally chose Pansy as the name for her 'Gone with the Wind' heroine, but settled on Scarlett just before the book went into print.

With time the Pansy has also become a symbol of two faithful lovers who are separated by distance. This also seemed apt under the circumstances of Covid-19 lockdowns. I knew many couples who were trapped in different countries as they rode out the pandemic unable to see or hold one another.

The Thoughts

Becoming Blue XV: Iris - WISDOM

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:50:00 +0000

I have stopped dreaming. I am being slowly eroded. I can't do future tenses. While the rest of Europe slowly unfolds itself like the eyes on a startled snail, and tries to go back to the way it was before, I am still folding myself and making creases. I am becoming the most intricate origami bird known to mankind. A rubix cube of intricacy. Crumpled and clustered. My focus is no longer outward or far away. It's inside. My focus shifted and with it so has blue. The longing for faraway places and people has dissolved, along with the possibility. There are no dreams or desires. The unraveling of unbecoming has stopped and now the cogs are rotating centripetally.

Work in Progress, oil on canvas, Iris.

It's July, and I am now working underground in true Cancer season style. This isn't something I did last year when I moved into the house. Last year I stayed above ground in the heat. This year, I changed track. I brought fairy lights down into the cave space and made a shrine above my bed with an old Beatles 'Strawberry Fields Forever LP' and a tambourine. In the other room I moved all the oil paintings and their materials. The rest of the house is a shell. I move through these spaces on occasion. Yesterday I walked through the old watercolor studio on my way to the terrace. I was briefly reminded of all the journeys I took there. Every painting is a journey. The space seemed to hold a different version of Jess, an outdated version and she was haunting that space. She hadn't left yet, almost as if she was waiting for the colder months to return so she could slip back into an old skin and resume the journeys she'd started.

Work in progress. 1.5m x 1m. Double Act. Bearded Iris. Watercolour on paper. Waiting for my return.
Jessica Rosemary Shepherd

The other bedroom was just as haunted by old journeys and former versions myself. An unfinished Iris duet rested on the bed rather expectantly along with half-read books. A hopeful, more focused version of Jess had been taking online Art History lessons in that room. Her shadow is still in that space, but it's fading fast. I looked at the wardrobes of clothes used for business meetings or travel. Smart outfits for 'going out' in and pretty dresses. I hadn't worn any of them in months. I have been wearing two outfits since October. My dad's hand-me-down 1970s blue cords and a gifted knitted waistcoat in the cold winter months and an orange £5 New Look dress that doesn't even fit properly in the summer months. I wondered why on earth I had all these beautiful clothes if I can't wear them and if there'd ever be a time to wear them again and if that time ever comes, would I even fit in them or want to wear them? It felt strangely opulent and indulgent to have so many unworn clothes just hanging there. It was also notable how a form of self-expression had been stripped from me. The projected 'made up' outward appearance was not important anymore. It also seems to have dissolved along with my dreams and future tenses.

First in a series of self portraits. Oil on canvas.

So where does this leave me or indeed 'us' as I know I cannot be alone? I am not sure but I think the answer is in here:

The Fifth Cardinal Sin is Lust. This sin was called 'Luxuria' in the medieval Christian world, and it was related to voluptuousness: unbridled sensuality. In older texts, Lust was also called 'Inappropriate Longing', revealing another, subtler, yet extremely important dimension of Lust: desiring that which one has no right to desire. And if we can begin to understand what constitutes 'inappropriate longing' for each individual, Lust might turn out to be an immensely creative force; for what we cannot possess in the outer world, we can nourish in the inner, and discover in the process a profound experience of joy.

The longing of Blue has started to shift and I quite excited about this. Like a miner, I am now looking at horizons and treasures on the inside, underground. I have a concave lens. I am deep sea diving. A hidden mermaid in the blue.

Becoming Blue XIV: Bluebell - HUMILITY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 18:44:00 +0000

Blue Bell, Sussex Downs, Watercolour on paper, Jessica Rosemary Shepherd

Becoming Blue XIII: Puya - DISTANCE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 18:29:00 +0000

There was always going to be at least one Puya in the Blue Collection. There had to be. Not only because it is the most extraordinary flower, but because I have wanted to paint it ever since I heard Marianne North's story in her trying to find it in its natural habitat in the Andes 160 years ago. The distance she had to travel to find it in her petticoats. It's remoteness, it's faraway-ness, it's rarity. It's like Lapis and all things blue - far away, exotic and hard to find. It was Marianne's legacy, along with Yves Klien, that made me want to turn Blue Flower global. I had to paint at least one species of Chilean Puya, if not several.

Puya alpestris var. zoellneri, Watercolour on paper, 1.5m x 1m.
Jessica Rosemary Shepherd

However, this particular Puya wasn't growing in the Chilean Andes. This is a Puya found in an equally distant place by Artist Heidi Willis in 2016 in the Blue Mountains in Australia. She very kindly sent me lots of images of the Puyas growing in the botanical gardens there. Therefore, for the first time ever, I was painting only from photographs and I can tell you - it's not as easy as one might think. Painting from photographs is far from easy. I had the photographs on my laptop for four years holding off any Puya painting until I had seen my own version of the flower. I was secretly hoping I'd make it to Chile and be able to paint the specimen from life in 2021. But then these huge bush fires broke out in Australia in early December 2020 and we all watched in horror as the animals and plants died. I'd go to bed crying. It was awful.

It was in these moments I decided to paint this particular specimen. I felt so helpless I didn't know what else to do and the sad irony that an endangered plant such as this, that should be protected where it grew in captivity in Australia, wasn't lost on me. The Blue Mountain nature reserve and botanical garden were damaged by the ferocious fires. The Puya might have been safer in Chile, where it battles with habitat destruction daily.

Puya alpestris var. zoellneri, Watercolour on paper, 1.5m x 1m.
Jessica Rosemary Shepherd

Puya Painting from Inky Leaves on Vimeo.

I will admit, the Puya was a tough painting. Several times it refused to be drawn - I found it difficult to do something on large paper in the new studio. I dropped the drawing, damaged the paper and had to start all over again. The studio was icy cold. I had to keep stoking the fire. Then I couldn't work on it while I had to house sit. Then I had a trip to Egypt and the impending doom for WWIII took over the Australian fire grief, and then a pandemic took over the issue of WWIII and then everything just conglomerated into a rather disturbing few months.

The astonishing thing, is that the Puya painting documents all of this time - from December 1st 2019 right through to June 30th 2020. I didn't work on it every day as I couldn't, my eyes would go funny and I remember feeling restless throughout, as though I wanted to be freer. At the time I was locked in my house in Spain where I wasn't allowed to go out on walks, so there is no freeing of the soul. Working on such a 'tight' piece is hard under prolonged periods of time. So to relax I indulged in oils, painting pansies and danced in the hallway to get me through the tight spots.

Finishing it in late June was equally strenuous. My hand's shock under the pressure and I could only work in half-hour slots. Dr. Shirley Sherwood has written to me expressing a wish to have it for her collection and I had another five people wanting it. I couldn't ruin it, for Shirley or for me or for Australia. I finished it at the end of June during a Pluto Jupiter conjunction. I decided to title her 'Blue Flame' in the hope that the forests of Australia would rejuvenate quickly.

Early stages

Palette:

Mameri blu turquoise

W&N Winsor Blue (Red shade)

W&N perylene maroon

Daler Rowney cobalt blue

W&N Paynes Grey

Schminke Cerulean Blue Hue

W&N transparent yellow

W&N permanent rose - anthers with the yellow

Add caption

Puya alpestris var. zoellneri, Watercolour on paper, 1.5m x 1m.
Jessica Rosemary Shepherd

One particular thing that really startled me with this painting, was how much a struggled to finish it. This piece took a lot longer than usual paintings of this size and usually the pressure speeds me up, not slows me down. Yes, it is a complex piece, but there were often weeks when I wouldn't touch it and I wondered why this was and I think it was linked to hidden knowledge. A knowing that the Puya will probably be my last accurate watercolour. After months of finding it hard to leap into a void - another void as there are several, I am feeling inside that I am going to try to let go again and there's a certain sort of grief associated with this letting go of a well-practiced way of painting. So powerful it is, that it has meant I have not been able to, I have been holding on, tighter and tighter. and the paintings have gotten tighter and tighter and some even ruined as a consequence. I couldn't bare to finish the Puya because I knew that this piece was the 'end point' - the last one.

And so it is now the end of June and the end of the Puya and with everything that has come to pass in 2020. Hidden in my secret house with a blue door I am now going to start leaving things less finished than finished. It is for the viewer to finish them. Who wants a photographical representation anyway?! It's all an illusion, painting is an illusion and it's really up to the viewer to finish it to see what they want to see.

Puya Framed by Fine Art Solutions in Chessington, UK
Now in the Shirley Sherwood Collection of Botanical Art

Becoming Blue XII: Pansy - FLAMMOLA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:47:00 +0000

As the world dips into chaos for the second time this year, I am hiding in my secret house painting. Project blue once again has been swept into the unknown, just as it was when I was travelling to Egypt on the brink of WWIII. The weeks running up to Egypt had me watching the news like I'd never watched it before. This time I am not watching missiles. I am watching countries shut themselves off one by one. Turning off and going dark, like lights going out in the Blitz.

Blue Pansy, 1m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

One of the many reasons I started the project Blue was in retaliation to Brexit, I plunged myself into the Romantic Movement and behaved as if borders didn't exist. But now there is a new problem on the horizon - a clever virus - and suddenly everything has become much more difficult. With nothing to control the situation but closing borders and shutting oneself away like you would clean laundry in a chest of drawers, I have crept back into my 12th house hole to paint in a house that feels almost as remote as Tasmania. It clutches onto the edge of a national park with no roads and comes with an ancient population of Spaniards. Here I am hidden, here I will weather the storm and work quietly without a car.

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." —Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A posy of pansies

Whilst painting the tight work of the Puya I am simultaneously applying broad washes of bright colours on enormous Pandemic Pansies. I have no idea how they will turn out, the eventual idea was to create an entire wall of them. Something a bit Alice and Wonderland. I like the way the patterns radiate out like hands, like viruses and the way the paint eeks out with 'washes'. They are petals of nostalgia, happy flowers. Gateways, representative of the portals of our hidden transformations. They are botanical butterflies.

Blue Pansy, Watercolour on paper, £100

The name "pansy" is derived from the French word pensée, "thought", and was imported into Late Middle English as a name of Viola in the mid-15th Century. Their other common name "love in idleness" stems from the image of a lover who had little or no other employment than to think of his beloved. In Italy, the pansy is known as 'flammola' (little flame), and I rather like that. A little flame of hope. Hope in the dark.

On account of its popularity in both society and its recurring appearances in Romantic poetry, a variety of new nicknames for the flower began to circulate. Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that:

With time the Pansy has also become a symbol of two faithful lovers who are separated by distance. This also seems apt under the current circumstances. I know many couples who are trapped in different countries as they ride out the pandemic unable to see or hold one another.

Giant Pandemic Pansy, watercolour on St. Cuthberts Mill paper. 1m x 1m.

I sat on my bed last night looking at three giant pansies, which I have placed purposely at the foot of my bed to remind me each time I wake up that the pandemic isn't a bad dream. Now I think the kitchen is the only room in the house not to be taken up by paintings. As I stare at the three faces I feel incredibly strong and happy and surprised at myself. 'Where did these come from?' I ask myself, just as I had done when I painted a quadtych in Tasmania this time last year. Again it feels like a massive evolutionary jump in my art that wasn't forced or predicted. It just happened. I just found myself playing with water and loosening up after the constriction of the Puya. When everyone's in fear, it seems I am still able to play. I hope these broader brush strokes continue.

I hope to continue this series of giant pansies as the pandemic tells its story. These first three giant pansies are destined for Abbott and Holder this August and will be included in the Blue Flower book which I still hope to publish in 2024.

If you are interested in commissioning your very own original small pansy (pictured 15 x 15cm) message me at mail@inkyleaves.com. They are £100 each.

I am remaining in isolation even though everything is opening up. I am rather enjoying this peaceful metamorphosis. Stay safe and wise. x

Nineteen Conkers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 21:54:00 +0000

I have started a new piece under the Great Pause of Covid - 19.

I have planted 30 conkers in upside down Mahou beer cans, reminiscent of the Verdan Trees which were planted after the First World War. Once growing, they'll be arranged in a theatre, akin to 19th Century Auricula stages, because plagues extend limits like theatre and are physically transformative and disruptive. The next stage of this project is under development, like all things. Let's hope they grow!

"The theatre restores us as our dormant conflicts and all their powers, [...] for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins."

Antonin Artaud - The theatre and its double

The Verdun trees are Horse Chestnut trees, planted in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the First World War. Conkers were collected from trees on the battlefield at Verdun, and sent to England to be distributed and planted as war memorials.

Becoming Blue XI: Epoca Blu

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:04:00 +0000

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

It is the morning, and like all mornings I wake up and check on all my seedlings. I feel like the Little Prince and his flower on his lonely little planet. Every morning since October I have walked onto the barren, icy roof terrace in my bare feet to inspect the moist, dewy pots for any signs of life. It's become a habit. Thing is, I secretly know that there is life under the dark soil. A few months ago the wind and rain had exposed a thick white searching root in one of the conker pots. I quickly covered it up again, worried it would get dry. This particular conker still hasn't sent an upward shoot, but to my delight, another one has! The conkers I planted in October on my birthday are now growing.

It's been a funny few days here in Spain. Things haven't altered that much for me since the outbreak of Covid19. I am still in my hermetic studio, but I am aware that the entire country is in lockdown and you are not allowed to leave the house for any other reason than for food and pharmaceuticals. You can walk your dog around the block, but only one person is allowed to do this. Same with food shopping. The rules are strict, but everyone here is happy to abide by them. Spain has a huge sense of what it is to be in a community and they all look out for one another. For me, life hasn't really changed. The only alteration is that I am now no longer able to go on my daily walk in the countryside.

'Isolation', Meconopsis - work in progress.
Watercolour, charcoal and gouche on paper.
56 x 76cm

It has been 63 years since Yves Klein painted 11 identical blue canvases for his ‘Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu' at the Gallery Apollinaire. For this exhibition, each canvas was painted with an ultramarine pigment which was suspended in a synthetic resin that would retain the brilliancy of the blue. Klein sought to challenge the boundaries between art and life. He posed questions concerning the nature of art, what it was, is and might be, and consequently challenged all borders and structures. The world is blue and blue has no borders and here we all are, hidden in the borders of a room, a house, a town, a country, now unable to wander.

"Procrastination is productive and intelligent.

Our urge to wander around instead of getting right to it is usually a signal that a deeper creative process is occurring, one that needs time we aren’t giving it."

Chani Nicholls

"Heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia" Carl Jung. Blue Flower is a project about movement and wandering. Freedom of movement. An essential right for any human. At a time of Brexit and the rise of Spanish Vox and other restricting forms of politics, I chose Blue as an act of rebellion, like the age-old romantics who'd rebel against social norms and would go wandering fields writing poetry. Blue is a colour that moves and essentially this project moves too. It skips between the vast landscapes of dreams, Dreamtime and the imagination, to the frontiers of our planet. It focuses on the landscapes, above and below us; the habitats, the cultures of faraway places, right into the belly of our homes. The fact we are all now 'trapped' in our homes does not stop Blue.

‘The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he cannot stay quietly in his room.’

Blaise Pascal

The flowers for this collection are used specifically to tell a particular type of story - there are many flowers, many stories and many shades in blue. It's about life. A blue life. As I move with blue, the paintings themselves have changed stylistically. As the colour is explored the style changes in order to capture that 'thing'. The thing is essentially about longing. Longing for faraway places that we shall never arrive in. Longing for the perfect, the comfortable. Longing for love, longing for change, longing for a better world. Blue Flower is as relevant now as it has always been.

'Blue Flame', Puya berteroniana, from Blue Mountain Botanic Garden, Australia.
Watercolour on paper, 1.5m x 1m.
Work in progress.

The flowers I have documented so far chart my own journey up to this point and have all been intentionally picked. Hyacinth for a domestic landscape, dyed Roses for something more unnatural, Forget-me-Nots for their association of not being forgotten. Some flowers were deliberately looked for in places of cultural significance, Covent Garden, Columbia Road, a street seller on a pavement in London in order to capture a moment in time. Others have been located in their landscapes, Orchids and Gentians and others have been found in botanical zoos or gardens, as not all flowers now grow in their motherland. Many now can't be found in their natural places. Displaced. A sign of the times.

Blue Flower up until this point has been a snapshot of a world in decay and was always going to be about my pilgrimage to the utopian picturesque, as in true Romantic form. Blue Flower, a seven-year project, is reaching its turning point in 2020, just as I felt it would. Borders are closing and everyone is being put on a spiritual retreat if they like it or not. They are having to find new ways of connecting whilst coming to terms with what they need, what they truly want and who they really are. The land needs nurturing like an egg. We need to slow down for a bit. To turn away from the mechanical world outside, towards the feminine, mystical world inside. Science extrapolates but poetry interpolates. Being inside is poetry. Everything outside of us is empirical. The real blue flowers are inside of us. Let's be like quantum thinkers in our profound search for an unseen world.

This 'silence gives us an opportunity to appreciate a great deal of what we generally see without ever properly noticing, and to understand what we have felt but not yet adequately processed. We have not only been locked away; we have also been granted the privilege of being able to travel around a range of unfamiliar, sometimes daunting but essentially wondrous inner continents.' The Book of Life

Sea Holly work in progress.

Since August 2018, I have been on a journey that is beyond words. I found a deep space inside of me, a whole landscape that I have been mostly happily roaming around in, to the point that I haven't been able to roam in reality and articulate. My issue over the past two years has been that I haven't found myself inhabiting the same place as most people I know. A gap that began to grow from a crack of blue. This has been my greatest upset over the past two years. That a gulf has been manifesting between me and you for months. I've been finding it harder and harder to bridge the distance because our brains felt like they were not in the same place even though our hearts were.

'Everything is delicate'
Meconopsis. 15 x 15cm, Watercolour
SOLD

However, since Covid 19, I suddenly feel less alone because now everyone is living a life I have been living - an isolated one, a virtual life. Life in another dimension. A life where all of your friends are far away. They might be in the same town, but you now can't 'see' them. For me, some of my closest friends are in different countries, and I am lucky to see them once every two or three years. I live mostly alone in silence. I have been in this place of living since August, but I had a dress rehearsal in Tasmania, where I was isolated in a different time zone without a car due to the devastating bush fires for two months. I was forced to heal in silence, far away from everyone and generally 'get on' despite skirting the edges of a nervous breakdown. I hallucinated and I cried for weeks. I got through it. The same happened this winter in Spain. Again - I got through it.

“No one is ever satisfied where he is.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Now it's Spring and for the first time in months, I feel less alone because everyone else is now going through a similar process to the one I went through. We are all at home, some alone, facing ourselves.

'A desert of discarded antlers. A blue flower hiding in a thicket,
stumped in the complex arrangement of pieces on a chequered board of star dust. Check mate. '

Love in a mist. Work in progress. Watercolour

“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…”

“It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Living alone for the past year (on and off) has helped me immensely in accepting what's happening right now. Painting, over the past year, has become less important and the land more so. I have been obsessed with soil and rocks since November 2019. I have to sit on it, walk on it, stick my fingers in it. Listen to it, speak to it. Touch it. The land wants trees. Well, here it does. I can hear it. This is why I am growing conkers, acorns, chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts on my roof. Nut trees are good, they feed birds and are less likely to be cut down by locals.

"Hold by confide among the stars

We could be the lucky ones

If we could only levitate

Fly low dear

Dance beneath the trees

If only we had oxygen

And we begin to breath

And we can watch

While the beauty takes it's toll"

I am also growing them not just for the land, but for me. I will keep a couple behind to put on my terrace as I don't know when I will be able to leave the house again. Now is the time to create an ecosystem on the roof. Deliveries are not really happening in Spain at the moment, so I am using EVERYTHING I can find. I am drilling holes in the large plastic boxes I used to move house in. Packaging trays for mushrooms, buckets for paint, some plastic pots that had brownies inside from a lunch break when I was teaching in Cairo. I don't have the budget or the delivery system to do it any other way.

Most of the seeds are coming from my food shopping. I have a lump of ginger, peppers, tomatoes and a garlic bulb that sprouted. I have seeds from my garden in London that are ten years old. I planted them last week and they are already growing. Now there's a hopeful sign if ever there was one. A seed, that has been still and dormant for ten years, suddenly growing. We too will grow after this has passed.

This darkness you're in is your eclipse,

wait for your illumination.

Becoming Blue X: Blue Rose - SORROW

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:31:00 +0000

"The fear of being abandoned. The terror of being lonely forever. The anxiety of being utterly dependent upon another. The panic of unbearable vulnerability and exposure. The dread of the looming death of yourself and everyone around you. These are the great fears that come as you wake, as you fall asleep, and as you dream through this life.

But perhaps the greatest fear of all is the fear of being loved. We don’t really see it this way, though. For when you are really loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. You will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than perfect and precious as you are. And that is terrifying.

Life is always seeing you in this way.

You long to be loved, to be seen, but please know that the implications are immense; they are cosmic. To allow yourself to be loved in this way a part of you must die. Everything you thought you weren’t must be surrendered. You must let go of the stories of the unlovable one, the awakened one, the special one, the imperfect one, and the despairing one. Love wishes to reveal your nakedness, to remove your clothing, and to burn away all that is false and less than whole within you. What you are is a raging firestorm of creativity, sensuality, openness, warmth, and kindness.

In this way, love is a destructive process, for it comes to re-order everything you thought you knew."

Matt Licata in Many Voices

Christmas Day, Watercolour on paper, 30 x 21 cm, J R Shepherd (2019) ©

The Blue Rose paintings - there are three so far. It is a muse I keep returning to. There's just something about its artificialness. A Rose that has been deliberately altered by mankind using synthetic dyes is for me representative of our unwavering quest for perfection and wholeness and the sorrow this obsession can bring. The first Rose 'Supernova' (bottom of the post) was completed in the summer of 2018, then, after an incredibly painful Christmas in Australia, I completed 'Christmas Day' (above). I thought that would be it, but no... this summer, in the chaos of eclipses and Brexit I returned to the roses again and produced 'Instar', where the blue rose is a mere speck in the throng of insanity.

"No longer seek happiness—wanting it only separates you from realizing the profound sense of wellbeing that is only present in the absence of desire. "

Desire is full of endless distances. As I continued to paint the texture of longing I put the finishig touches onto 'Christmas Day' after a 7 month break. It was a painting that I had originally begun whilst recuperating alone in a house in Melbourne on December 25th. It's about heartbreak, there's no way around it. I was broken when I did this. It is the sorrow and bitter disappointment of blue.

"Heartbreak is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control… Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going".

David Whyte

'Instar', Blue Rose, Watercolour and charcoal on paper,
56 x 76 cm, WORK IN PROGRESS

Above and below is 'Instar'. It was painted eight months after 'Christmas Day' and is just as much about longing as all the other works. This piece for me is about being smothered and longing to break free. About being stuck, trapped and hidden. Similar themes to Leafscape and my previous post on 'The Lady of Shallot'. It's about chaotic politics, bureaucracy, a broken English Rose, an Albion with no plan and the dream, the contradictory utopian dream to be free and yet smothered. The dream (blue flower) is almost out of view. You have to squint to find it, but it's still there. A fragment of hope. Alongside all the politics, the painting is also about the responsibility I feel in having to make certain decisions and how we are all the living consequence of our decisions.

"The process of transformation consists mostly of decay and then of this crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt. The strange redundant word instar describes the stage between two successive molts. Instar implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far." Solnit

"One way you know you're approaching core territory is that your experiences become indescribable. Let yourself stand in an inner confrontation with the unknown within you -- and what, in truth, can never be explained." Eric Francis

'Instar', Blue Rose, Watercolour and charcoal on paper,
56 x 76 cm, Jessica R Shepherd (2019) ©

As blue unfolds like Mandlebrot Set I sit here madly laughing to myself. You see, for months I have been thinking about 'longing' and how to possibly overcome it in order to see it for what 'it' is and I am finding it incredibly difficult to write a critique about because it is so ingrained in my existence and my ego. So I have to overcome that in order to see it, which, I guess, is what Zen is and no sooner had I considered this as an option, was I reminded of the text I wrote in the Introduction to Blue Flower:

"On a sunny September afternoon, as tired leaves rustled in the garden beyond her window pane, she opened her book 'An Inquiry into Blue' and took out a flatted, knotted mass of black and brown hair that she had collected from a bed at Kensal Green several weeks before. Then, with her other hand she opened her indigo bound copy of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and placed the hairs between pages 32 and 33. Once closed, she took the Antwerp blue scarf that was wrapped around her neck and tied it around the book before hiding it at the bottom of her wardrobe..."

There it was... staring me in the face, right at the start of my journey into blue petals. In excitement, I once again pace towards the bookshelf in the room of my childhood and my fingers rummage between Encyclopedias, French Dictionaries and Richard Scarry books until they uncover the crushed Antwerp blue scarf and the broken, worn binding it enshrouds. It was on the same shelf as the 2005 diary on longing. Circles, everything is a circle and there are clues everywhere.

All states of mind are a delusion - transcend them all.

Studio shot of Instar.

I have reading to do, but I wonder - will this actually help me as a painter? You see, there aren't many of us who live in the present, detached, with no sense of longing and my mission was always to reach out to souls and help them to see the beauty in flowers by making the flowers humanoid. I do this by incorporating the contradictions and complexities of being a human into my work. How we long for the things that don't really exist. If I were to paint something of no longing, would anyone actually want that on their wall? What even is that? Isn't that what botanical art WAS? A mere document devoid of all feeling; a scientific description of a plant? Surely we all want mirrors? That's why we buy smartphones and take selfies. That's why we fall in love. Surely that's why we buy art? It's a type of therapy.

"Happiness and unhappiness are two aspects of the same thing, which is the false sense of self's search for inner stillness. Happiness always fades and disappears—just as every sort of appearance within awareness does—and in its place, unhappiness inevitably arises."

The cyclical nature of things brings me to the final Rose of my Blue Roses so far. One that I laid out last year... It feels like a long time ago now. The early days of blue, when things felt less convoluted. At the time I wanted to paint grief and the fading and changing of things and this was the outcome, and I called it 'Super Nova', the final stage of a decaying star. But like with all things, when a star dies, new ones are made and supernovae are vital in this, because when they explode, supernovae create shock waves that compress the star material in interstellar space which in turn causes large clouds of gas to form new stars. Such is the circle of things.

Supernova, Blue Rose, Watercolour and charcoal on paper,
56 x76 cm, Jessica R. Shepherd (2018) ©

Becoming Blue IX: Hyacinth - OBSCURITY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 14:00:00 +0000

Blue is longing. The colour of solitude and of desire.

The colour of 'over there' as seen from 'over here'.

The colour of where you are not,

and where you can never go.

'The Breach', Hyacinth sp., 1m x 1m, Watercolour on paper, Jessica Rosemary Shepherd (2019)

"Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky"
T. S. Eliot

The name of the Hyacinth flower has the most interesting meaning. In Greek mythology, Apollo the sun god and Zephyr the god of the west wind compete for a young boy’s affections. At one point Apollo is teaching Hyakinthos how to throw the discus and Zephyr gets so angry that he blows a gust of wind in Apollo’s direction, which sends the discus hurling back in the direction of Hyakinthos, striking and killing him. Apollo, brokenhearted, notices that a flower springs up from the blood that was spilled and names the flower Hyacinth in honor of the boy. This symbol of the hyacinth flower has remained pretty simple throughout history.

"Every love has a landscape"

Solnit

Therefore it seemed appropriate for me to finally decide to venture towards the Hyacinth during my summer of silence where things started to go so badly wrong in my head. The discipline I needed to adopt in order to keep in equilibrium was really hard to maintain. And so now, with everything sloshing about, no lunch hours, everything seems to now be about boundaries, my own and everyone else's. The myth of the Hyacinth is also about borders and the disaster that can unfold when things are pushed. A gust of wind, it's all it took.

My Hyacinth painting is about a breach. It's a crack, a cleft, a penetration. It's a line drawn and a line crossed. Something mischievous has found a way to creep in, be it a feeling, a notion or a thing. It's possibly unwanted, I am not sure. Doesn't feel good if I am honest. It could be something that is much more dangerous than it seems, something that could chip away at structures like dry rot. This piece is deep. It comes from buried chronic feelings from a long, long time ago. Something that's resurfacing in me as I sit in silence.

Hyacinth, work in progress

Dutch Hycathins always look hideous to me and I have often found their smell just as overbearing. I never was a fan. My mother is allergic to the bulbs and I remember as a child associating some form of fear of them just from that alone.

Diary Entry:

"This time I am reigning everything in. I must remain as silent as a nun. I must devote my energy to a higher power. Remain open, slightly lost and thus vulnerable. This is becoming increasingly difficult to do. Nothing feels balanced. Just painted in the giant leaves of the hyacinth, they look rude and suggestive. everything looks like something other than what it should be. The watercolours are disintegrating. Maybe by this time next year the shapes will take over and the petals and leaves will no longer be fully recognisable? The leaf looks like an antler I dreamt about only a few days ago. My dreams. Blue is increasingly becoming about my dreams. As I look at every painting, what is coming out are my dreams and how I see plants in them. "

Hyacinth, work in progress

I am now high on blue Hyacinth. the smell of my childhood and of Abbott and Holder. However, unlike most, my Hyacinths are always mixed with the scent of Brasso and furniture polish. Hyacinths leave me with an image of a desperate 1950s housewife or of a house that's gone wrong. Dry marriage beds, dysfunctional families and that perfumed mask, the pretense - everything is ok on the outside. I knew when the time came for me to paint the Dutch Hyacinth, that I would play on not only it's hideousness in terms of its own real morphology, but also the associations I have in my head. All of the flowers of blue have associations - I am not just painting a flower. Every painting is a deep exploration of my psyche, it's memories and projections. With the Hyacinth, I knew from day one I wanted something monstrous - the elephant in the room that no one is prepared to discuss.

Hyacinth, work in progress in the new studio

I started the piece back in June 2019 and during that time I had to leave it behind in my studio in Spain while I visited my old childhood home in Sussex. Seemed apt in a way, to return to that space of heady Hyacinths. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was rummaging through my bookcase looking for a scrapbook because I wanted to make a Romantic Herbal for one of my disappearing men who'd I'd not seen in a while. As a consequence of not having seen him, I was also drafting out (and struggling with) a blog post about absence and how it makes the heart grow fonder. So, there I was rummaging in my childhood bookcase, and as I foraged between Encyclopedias and French dictionaries, an old diary of mine fell out and opened itself onto s specific page. A page I'd written in 2005 on my ideas surrounding 'longing', after my boyfriend at the time had disappeared to work off-grid in the jungles of Kenya. Oh, un coup de des! It seems enduring love is something I encounter a lot. Freud would have a hay day with me!

Hyacinth, work in progress, close up - needs more layers

In ancient civilisation, longing used to be about longing for otherness. Of what it was that put us on this planet. As ancients, we would watch the sun, moon and stars and wonder who or what put them there. What it was to be a human. The longing was for knowledge, for understanding. Nowadays, however, longing seems to have morphed into something else entirely. Now, equipped with so much knowledge, I find humans are having to place their longing onto other things - materialistic things, or for other human beings, animals, popularity, times lost, times yet to come, other places or for identities, religions and political notions. The Blue Flower is about longing, to long for the places we will never arrive in. In order to continue deciphering the illusionary nature of Blue, I am now considering what it is to long for something, and how I can generate that effect on the canvas. I am currently looking into peepholes, time-lapses and the miniature. Works I probably won't start until 2020.

Hyacinth, work in progress, in the studio

"There father and son

Shall mingle in dust

As if life itself

Had been mostly illusion but partially real

And partially pain...

....As the world disappears"

A Song for Douglas, After He's Dead

Current 93

As you know, I like to turn things on their head. To understand longing maybe we also need to understand what it is to disappear and hide because when we disppear we can create longing in others? When we ourselves choose to disappear, I feel we are trying to center ourselves or to remove ourselves from something that we consider threatening to our existence. But the thing is, we still long for something, be it a resolution, safety, wholeness, control. So in this case, it seems that longing is an overarching theme and the act of hiding is just a spoke from it. So as usual for blue, turning things on their head hasn't helped me to find an answer. I am still lost.

"So many things to see in this old world

But all I can see is you".

Together Alone 1970

So it seems our life's journey is driven by longing. It is perhaps the only overarching human emotion that connects all of us. Longing has to do with the divine because what we long for the most is a relationship with our destiny and origins. We may not be conscious of it, but we long to know 'why, how what', in whatever guise that might mean to the individual. This in turn brings us back to projection, to possibly thinking that the missing elements of who we think we are can be supplied by another person, or through the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, to make us feel whole. But really only a connection with the cosmos and an acceptance of the unknown can fill that hole.

Studio lights on, late night working in the new casa. August 2019

Blue started as a utopian project about hope, and where there is hope, there is longing, and where there is longing there is heartbreak, grief, and tragedy. The joyful-sad that is blue... The original text written by Novalis in the 18th Century, in which this contemporary version of Blue Flower is based on, was about longing:

“It is not the treasures,” he said to himself, “that have stirred in me such an unspeakable longing; I care not for wealth and riches. But that blue flower I do long to see; it haunts me and I can think and dream of nothing else." Novalis

Blue is the longing for the distances you never arrive in, it is the colour of solitude and of desire, the colour of 'over there' seen from 'here', the colour of where you are not. and the colour you can never go. Blue is the backward glance, the dream, the illusion.

"Longing is divine discontent. Longing brings the horizon close, it makes it possible. The ache, the humiliation, it is felt as the beautifully familiar. Longing has its own secret future destination and longing is nothing without its dangerous edge. We are a form of an invitation to others and to otherness. We are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing. In longing, we move to the unknown that we think we know." David Whyte

Nostalgia and the postcard:

I have been collecting postcards of every place I visit for Blue Flower for a final piece of artwork I haven't yet planned. For me, the postcard is the best souvenir of all because it ends up taking it's own separate journey from the place you were in to finally reach the hands of a loved one. A loved one you miss and therefore long for. Souvenirs such as this embrace a sense of longing doubly - they authenticate a past or otherwise remote experience and at the same time to discredit the present. "What lies between 'here' and 'there' is oblivion, the void that marks the radical separation between past and present." (Susan Stewart). Postcards are all about longing, little documents that point towards the obscurity that time and place (and therefore experience) inhabits in our lives.

New view from the terrace, Granada

As I read more and more, longing becomes at its most basic fundamental level about time and space and therefore our connection with the divine. Even moments of 'love at first sight' are about an improbable meeting that happens between souls in a specific place and a certain time. At times, there is more weight given to the space-time event than to the actual soul one has encountered. So to long for something is to have a restless, unhappy, unresolved relationship with the unknown elements of time and space.

"It's quite overwhelming to accept the unknown. especially when there is so much potential."

Eric Francis

Last thoughts:

After much deliberation in the summer of 2017, I decided to embrace Blue Flower as my next project in my attempt to reject a world that is becoming more and more controlled and isolating. Humans are now inhabiting 'invisible environments'. Digital places that exist inside telephones and computers that are not real or grounded and full of longing. In these places, no one has a body - everyone is a ghost in these zones. Dangerous things happen when we lose our bodies because we lose the root of our longing. We loose our connection to the mystical. Things become extreme and desire gets polarised. We become obsessed with the idea and not with the reality. We become nostalgic and rooted in illusions.

"Whatever you desire of the world will not come to pass exactly as you will like it. But the other mercy is that whatever the world desires of you will also not come to pass. And what actually occurs is this meeting, this frontier. But it’s astonishing how much time human beings spend away from that frontier, abstracting themselves out of their bodies, out of their direct experience, and out of a deeper, broader, and wider possible future that’s waiting for them if they hold the conversation at that frontier level. Half of what’s about to occur is unknown, both inside you and outside you." David Whyte

The passions kindled by longing must be harnessed and used judiciously, or they threaten to consume our hopes and dreams. Blue was always a political project as well as a personal one. The personal is political and I wanted to paint something that not only resonated with you on a personal level emotionally but also something that picked up on the chaos of the world we are currently living in collectively. The sleepy steps we simultaneously take to make our own little fake utopias. Uncontrollable personal longing has the potential to damage our own experience of the world and our natural environments. "True fellowship among men must be based upon a concern that is universal. It is not the private interests of the individual that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity. That is why it is said that fellowship with men in the open succeeds" I-Ching. Our current political and environmental crises are rooted in undisciplined longing. and the sad thing is, we've just not worked out that to be creative and connect to others is where wholeness exists. This is where contentment is. Earthly reality is when we wake up and confront our own ideas about the mirage we long for.

"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love"

Carl Sagan

THE BREACH
Watercolour and charcoal on paper, 1m x 1m, Jessica Shepherd

'What is dark clings to what is light and so enhances the brightness of the latter. A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine. Thus the sun and moon cling to heaven, and grain, grass, and trees cling to the earth. So too the twofold clarity of the dedicated man clings to what is right and thereby can shape the world.

Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when man recognizes this limitation and makes himself dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, he achieves success. The great man continues the work of nature in the human world with respect to time. Through the clarity of his nature he causes the light to spread farther and farther and to penetrate the nature of man ever more deeply.' I Ching

With thanks to Amaya and Vida for all their help and guidance on this line of enquiry.

Becoming Blue VIII: Meconopsis - HIDING

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 13:13:00 +0000

You left me spent in the blue.

'27 Degrees', Meconopsis sp, (2019), Watercolour on paper, J R Shepherd

"A Bumble Bee Clambers into her drunken,

fractured goblet—

Up the royal carpet of a down-hung,

Shrivel-edged, unhinged petal, her first-about-to-fall.

He's in there as she sways.

He utters thin

Sizzling beats of difficult enjoyment.

Her carnival paper skirts,

Embrace him helplessly.

Already her dark pod is cooking its drug.

Every breath imperils her.

Her crucible"

Big Poppy - Ted Hughes

Close up on work in Progress, 1.5m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

The symbolism associated with the Poppy are the signs of magic, fertility and eternal life. The Egyptians included poppies at funerals and in burial tombs. The Greeks used poppies in the shrines of Demeter, goddess of fertility, and Diana, goddess of the hunt. Poppies denote sleep, rest and repose, the loyalty and faith between lovers and the memory of souls lost.

Close up on work in Progress, 1.5m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

The Poppy - it grows in the harshest of environments. It is the flower of dreams, of fate, of escape, of seduction, intoxication, transformation, transcendence, of fertility, death and of survival against all odds. And so, as I gritted my teeth for a bumpy summer, I plunged into the almost unnatural blueness of the ever mystical Himalayan Poppy. I needed to survive against all odds. I needed to temporarily escape. To rest. To have faith in the unknown.

Work in progress, Blue Poppy, 1.5m x 1m, J R Shepherd, Inky Leaves 2019

So here I am, post Hydrangea and Sun Orchid, still wanting to find ways of painting the illusion, the invisible, that thing that is unknown to us, and naturally I am finding this impossible. The problem with blue is there are no constraints. To have a constraint is usually a good thing when creating because you are forced to problem-solve and it's usually during these times when good work is made. At the moment, I am swimming in a sea of illusion and possibility - anything could happen.

As I lap on layers of watercolour I start to feel a little silly at having also retreated back to old methods of painting after having ventured out so boldly in oils, but there's nothing wrong with going back and retracing one's steps. Things change, things fade and with that, I am left accepting the fact that sometimes something or someone, that can feel really significant has the potential to suddenly disappear like Cobalt Chloride ink and consequently become insignificant.

However, as I sat with this, planning paintings that described the blueness of something fading and disappearing, like the hazy blue that rests on a distant horizon, totally unreachable, forever taunting, something else jumped in and blew me off course. A bolt out of the blue. A flash of light. The unexpected. The turning of clocks. And now blue gets even more deliciously perilous and complicated. So I sat for a few days, desperately trying to sew the holes in my battered Tasmanian sails in preparation for the possibility to be blown off course once again. It seemed I wasn't going to paint the fading of lost souls or a haunting. To paint what disappears will have to wait, for now I am going to have to paint that bolt of our the blue - another 'event' piece, possibly to sit alongside the giant Agapanthus.

'27 degree Cross", (Meconopsis sp.), Work in Progress, 1.5m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,

And left the flush'd print in a poppy there;

Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,

And the fanning wind puff'd it to flapping flame.

Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,

And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is,

And drowsed in sleepy savageries,

With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.

A child and man paced side by side,

Treading the skirts of eventide;

But between the clasp of his hand and hers

Lay, felt not, twenty wither'd years.

The Poppy, Francis Thompson

'27 degree Cross", (Meconopsis sp.), Work in Progress, 1.5m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

However, no sooner had I got my sails up in preparation, did this Promethean-like bolt that appeared also disappear! As I sat wondering how I managed to manifest two really painful disappearing events one after the other I realised that I just had to acknowledge that there were higher forces at play which were beyond my control and this time, unlike in Australia, I really did have to comply and let go. I went into hiding. I escaped. I saluted to wheels of time and I embraced the unknown begrudgingly.

So here I am back to grappling with the fading of things, their absence and the invisible, and as I do this, I find myself becoming invisible. Like the Anubis, I still feel I am in between worlds. Big, meaningful, yet confusing things keep happening to me and I am becoming frightened and weary. The consequence of this has led me to retreat, something I never used to do. Such a retreating will be why I probably won't publish these blog posts until quite some time as passed since the time I wrote them. It's as if I am hiding in time, using it's constant as a type of shield. I feel too open, too visible. With my presence on the internet almost making it nigh impossible to actually physically disappear, I find myself using time rather than geography to conceal myself. "Hiding is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light" (David Whyte). Timing is everything.

I will perform a dead defying magic show
For those of you who wanna go some place else
I'm brave but I can't save you
From the things you won't change for yourself

Angus and Julia Stone 'Death Defying Acts'

Work in Progress, Blue Poppies in Perthshire, 1m x 1m, Watercolour and charcoal on paper

Over the course of her life, Louise Bourgeois would emphasize the importance of solitude to the creative process. As an artist who strove to be “a woman without secrets” as she told art historian Christiane Meyer-Thoss that moments of seclusion and silence offered time to reflect on her emotions, which would then became the subject of her intimate body of work. Bourgeois ascribed to Ernst Kris’s belief that “I have to hide, otherwise I will be trapped". The act of hiding offers safety, freedom, and, in turn, inspiration.

'Lament', (Meconopsis sp.) Watercolour, charcoal and gouache on paper, 1m x 1m (2019)

As I hid and made myself invisible I painted two new pieces, two very different from one another. Poppies on white and poppies on black. The Poppies on white I decided to title '27 Degrees' for the petals of the central flower make a cross. A destined cross which is also present in the astrology charts of said event. Poppies on white is about a bolt out of the blue. It's divine intervention. A happy, fated event. Poppies on black, on the other hand, is about hiding and about not being seen properly. Of having to flower in the darkness. As with a lot of my paintings, there's a 'doublet' - two flower heads which have lost their petals. They stand there naked, slightly deformed, with a skirt of anthers, not really looking at one another.

"Hidden.

I am a kaleidoscopic flower,

blossoming inwardly."

Section of a poem written by J R Shepherd (June 2019)

"Hiding is underestimated. We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others". (David Whyte).

'27 degree Cross", (Meconopsis sp.), 1.5m x 1m, Watercolour on paper.

As Blue continues, I now understand several important things. Firstly, although traditionally looking for the blue flowers in the Romantic sense of Novalis' book which is about longing and the love for a partner, Blue is predominantly a journey of self-discovery. In these early years of Blue Flower, I am having to learn more about myself than anything else. Learning how to become integrated. and the ways in which we can do this by pushing ourselves beyond our fears and learning more about the hidden aspects of our psyche. I guess that's the only time when we find out what we are capable of.

The blue mountains near my new studio.

In my retreating of the world, I moved house, where I currently live alone with the swallows and the bats. The silence is deeply nourishing, as is the cleaner air, new walks and space. I have so much space. Space to create. Space to dream.

The blue lake near my new studio

As I sit alone hiding in my 'tower' painting ideas and possibilities I often wonder if I am really living. If this is a 'full' life? During these times, my mind is brought back to the real female icon of Romantic literature, the Lady of Shallot, and how she looks into her glassy mirror, unable to exist in, or see, the real world through her own eyes. I have always resonated with this poem and it's a deep sense of longing to participate in life and to belong. I long to be touched, to be held, to be seen. It's why I entitled one of my Tasmanian pieces 'Elaine the Fair' for that is Shallot's other name. Although the mirror brings the world to the Lady, it's nothing like the real thing. She sees images as a sort of half-world. The mirror in Tennyson's poem feels like a symbol of her intense, terrible isolation from the world. Something I thought painting might resolve when I originally embarked on this journey, and yet still, this poem remains to be something that I resonate with pretty strongly, if not more so.

She's also popped up annually since I started Blue. I remember seeing a painting of Elaine the Fair when I was with the Cheshire Cat back in the summer of 2017 at Masterpiece, and then she was referenced again when I was down under with the Time Traveller on my birthday. I had drunk too much and was laying on a chaise longue and his mother said I looked like the Lady of Shallot. Funny how these archetypes play out...

"For me—this withering flower of dreams"

The Poppy - Francis Thompson

Poppy, Work in progress, watercolour and charcoal on paper, 56 x 76 cm

Tennyson's clear mirror shows the "shadows of the world". This idea of a clear mirror full of shadows is a bit of a paradox, but then what is in the mirror isn't real. I mean, is she even real living such a half life? What has always intrigued me about this hidden lady, is her talent, for she can turn the sights of the mirror into an image in her web. It's because of this that I often think of the mirror and weaving web as metaphors for the life of an artist. As an artist, The Lady of Shallot can represent life, but she can't be a part of it. Artists, in a sense, are always reproducing life from a distance. You can see how, if this went too far, it might make someone feel alienated and lonely and maybe even cursed, like the Lady of Shalot.

As this Romantic poem draws to a close, the mirror, ironically, eventually shows the Lady the thing that will break its spell over her. When Lancelot comes trotting into the mirror, everything changes for the Lady. Even a shadow of him in a mirror is enough to let her know she has to change her life.

A blue Lady of Shallot, painted by Sidney Harold Meteyard in 1913

This summer something cracked the mirror. I saw a magical, intriguing shadow. And as I put the finishing touches on each poppy petal I am left wondering how long must I hide in this tower, or choose to? If I'll ever have the guts to I come out of the tower? And if I will ever be seen for who I really am all the while I straddle a four/five-dimensional world as the medium and artist?

The four sun orchids now all framed by Wagner Framemakers in Hobart, Tasmania.
Ready for an exhibiting this July at the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart with the Bob Brown Foundation

With thanks to Gareth, Amaya and Nicholas.

Bibliography

David Whyte, ‘HIDING’ From a book of essays 'CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words'

Becoming Blue VII: Hydrangea - DISCORDANCE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 May 2019 14:10:00 +0000

Caught in the headlights.
The illicit, tempting, opulence that lurks on our quiet streets.

As the snow melted on the Sierra Nevada, plumes of acrid, dirty smoke rose from blackened fields and were contorted by the afternoon winds. As I crossed the field of smoke, phantoms appeared. Flickers of unpainted pieces flashed in my closed eyes with the making and collapsing of little dust devils all along the powdery track. I am still transforming. I crawled out of a chrysalis, but I am still shedding skins. It's been an incredibly enriching week. I've learned a lot about myself. Yesterday I found myself collapsed in a heap on the cold tiled floor listening to loud music, drinking wine and smoking an old roll-up which I had discovered in a tin that hadn't been opened for 15 years,. Then I danced for five hours, achieved very little on a material level and went to bed.

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard

Of destructions", a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?

Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,

Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Blue Guitar, Wallace Stevens

Hydrangea, watercolour, charcoal and gouache on 640gsm Saunders Waterford paper.
1.5m x 1m. Work in Progress.

There will be time to murder and create

T.S. Eliot

The next day I found myself sipping wine for breakfast, which was when I realized that I actually needed to consume something. It was 3pm and I was loosing it again. By 4pm I had put the glass away and made myself a meal and decided to go for a walk in the searing heat of Granada. I was at the time contemplating the symbology of me walking through metaphorical fires with people I love and wondered who would actually walk through with me. Who had the guts. Then, about 20 minutes into my walk I was confronted with thick yellow smoke and the sound of cracking. A real fire...

"Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar"

It was so thick that smoke and it bellowed menacingly at me. I had no idea how long it would go on for in the opposite direction as the wind was not only whipping it up into a frenzy but equally pushing it backward away from me. I marched onward. I am swimming in the Romantic Movement, the place of extreme mental states and transcendence. This is my territory. Keep pushing membranes Jessica.

Close up on the Hydrangea. Watercolour, charcoal and gouache on paper.

Ten minutes later, with lungs coated and a fierce brow of gritty determination, I came out of the other side with 'you're everything I wanted, your just another part of me' running through my head and a kaleidoscope of pictures waiting to be painted.

The month of June trembled like a butterfly

Pablo Neruda

A productive walk. In a lubricated state with a skirt riding up my backside, I managed to plan out four paintings. None of which are my normal thing. All completely new and coming from somewhere newly discovered. This is a wondrous egg-like place. I won't self destruct - I have work to do, but it is fun to push the veil. I dislike conforming anyway. I need to be free.

Hydrangea on the drawing board.

'when you work out where to draw the line

Your guess is as good as mine'

Coldplay

April

As I unpacked the boxes I had sent to Spain during Christmas this April, I felt a tightness around my throat. A wallet of spent receipts, a giant orchid book, meat raffle tickets, crushed flowers. It was a long dry hour. Then I turned 180 degrees and looked back at the unfinished paintings sitting in the rack behind me waiting to be uncovered. 'I'll do that tomorrow' I said to myself, already feeling like I'd gone through enough for one afternoon.

The next day I confronted the Hydrangea in the rack. As I peeled back the layers of blue cotton fabric and transparent plastic I began to weep. By the time I'd uncovered half of the unfinished painting, I was on the floor, head hung low, palms on a cold tiled floor, like Dorian Gray I was defeated. These paintings are most certainly Horcruxes and at that moment I was faced with an old reflection of myself. Heaven knows how I will ever finish it.

In Japan, the Hydrangea has a historical tradition behind it linked to apologies and gratitude. An emperor supposedly gave Hydrangeas to a maiden he loved as an apology for neglecting her when other business took up all his attention. The Victorians were not as fond of the Hydrangea and considered it a mostly negative plant. The flowers were sent to declare someone a boaster or braggart, or to chastise someone for their frigidity in turning down a claim of romantic love. It also means frigidity because of the Medieval belief that young women who grew or picked Hydrangeas would never find a husband.

Diary entry mid April:

"Progressed sun seconds away from conjuncting venus and uranus in the first house. It's got to burst at some point, something has to give. Keep pushing. Don't lose faith. As I alienate myself more and more, pushing friends away and turning into a God awful grump, I refuse to lose the vision but am willing to lose myself. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Blue is taking a lot already. It is no Leafscape. Studio is a mess. Paper everywhere again. I have taken to wearing a blue apron to try to help me sink into work mode. Uniforms can be good."

End of April:

Work in progress back in September 2018.

"Buffering, I still feel like Windows 10 installing updates. Can't get traction. Everything is taking longer than usual. I miss Tasmania. I miss oils. I miss the freedom, the unknown, the otherworldliness and the vulnerability. I was so vulnerable there. It cut deep. I was beginning to think that the island is drifting away from me and that my return might not happen after all, but tonight I can say that I would do anything to go back there and paint orchids in oils again. I must get back."

May

It's now early May and already a lot has happened. Persephone was released from the underworld, and Demeter is happy - all the flowers came into bloom. And as is often the case, as soon as one door closed, another opened. The High Priestess now dressed in blue sits elegantly in front of a thin veil decorated with pomegranates and with her feet firmly planted on the soil of Granada, she collided with a Magus. This was not expected.

The outpourings of this collision are going to take some time to work out. It's a story that will evolve with the movements of stars. Despite unexpected doors opening, I still go to bed with Tasmania in my heart and tears in my eyes. It's half one in the morning, and unlike every other night, this time I decided to grab my laptop and do something constructive rather than lay there trying to make sense of Tasmania and whatever it was that happened to me down there. The night before I touched all the stones I had collected from varying locations and brought back with me. They felt strange as if they didn't belong in this dimension. Did I go to a different dimension? The dimension of dreams?

Row, row, row your boat.

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

Life is but a dream.

Text message sent to a friend in the middle of the night:

"It's fading like a dream. I want to paint this feeling. The fading. Not so much the haunting now, but that thing of memories and of them fading."

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Eliot

Touching up areas.I discovered that this piece required me to use white gouache with the watercolours in the flowers, in order to create that chalky texture so commonly associated with Hydrangea flowers.

As time ticked on, the Magus, like the Time Traveller and my entry into Tasmania, disappeared. As I sat in a sea of longing for people and places, I started to think about endings. How I go to places and spend time with people that are holding onto some sort of darkness and pain, possibly in order to channel it into artwork. My obsession with Tasmania is probably about that. I remember feeling when I was there that I could die at any moment. That I was fighting for my life. I could hear all the voices of tribes who died without a whisper. I could feel sadness. Maybe I put myself through this to create some sort of sacred bond with the land and with people. To feel its/their pain, or the pain I bring in.

I dreamt of Anubis a year before Australia and again whilst there. Anubis 'weigh the hearts' of the dead. Is this what I am doing? Anubis is a Greek rendering of this god's Egyptian name. Before the Greeks arrived in Egypt, around the 7th century BC, the god was known as Anpu or Inpu. The root of the name in ancient Egyptian language means "a royal child." Inpu has a root to "inp," which means "to decay." The god was also known as "The Dog who Swallows Millions," and "Master of Secrets" (12th house Scorpio). Anubis was sometimes associated with Hades in the underworld. I feel like an Anubis with one foot in each world. For me, art is shamanic - it is medium based and the artist is the medium. I am beginning to understand what it means to be a medium, to be a Magus myself.

There are those who create only to destroy, and those that might feed on the destruction to create. And I guess here is where we make spinning vortex. We spin creating and destroying, creating and destroying. I hope that now I have realised the destruction I am clearly drawn to, that I might actually be able to make some new, interesting work. Something alchemical that spins.

Well I heard you were (You were a lion)

About how brave you are

Well I heard you were (You were still trying)

Trying to get back to the start

And we won’t let it into the kitchen

No we won’t let it into the house

No we won’t let it through the front door

'Cause its burning our pretty little heart I

I'm gonna miss you

Gonna miss you

And all of the things we should have done

Angus and Julia Stone 'Heat Beats Slow'

I have finally found the thing that I keep kicking down the street that I referred to in 'The Rabbit Hole'. You could say it's taken me my whole life to understand but it's been a particular focus since Leafscape. I am no longer deluded or in denial. This chasing of Blue and this chasing of myself and of energies and the things I keep bringing in. I have discovered that life is actually really messy, and that mess is so very, very fertile. Maybe I keep subconsciously making mess of things so I can create? A few months ago an artist friend said to me that I was destructive. That I have a habit of charging into people's lives with no warning. That I put the plug into the socket and it inevitably blows up and everyone is left feeling dazed and permanently altered afterward. A bit like chaos - the spinning. Petrol on a raging fire. I come in - the Anubis, the harvester. It's neither destructive or nourishing. It's just a cycle. I was denial about this. I wanted to be perfect. No one's perfect.

"I live always at the edge of mystery - the boundary of the unknown."

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Just finishing off the bottom. 'Tipping Point', watercolour, charcoal and gouache on Saunders Waterford paper. 1.5m x 1m

As May came to a close, I was in the middle of having a stern look into the darker more shadowy aspects of my personality and as such, I was finally able to revisit and finish the Hydrangea - a painting I had started with so much hope before my Antipodean adventure. The painting was originally about hope, and it still is in a way, but illusionary hope, false hope, miss-placed hope, or the dreams that are a mere flash in the pan. We all have them - miss placed energies. To me, finally being able to revisit the painting meant that I clearly needed to understand more fully the relationship between creating and destroying in order to finish this piece.

Aged 18. 'Chrysalis' (c.2001)

The Hydrangea as a flower that takes me to the front gardens of Western suburbia where it commonly grows - a place I don't particularly enjoy spending too much time in for its apparent fakeness and superficiality. The fact that Hydrangeas can be pink or blue or both in itself is also relevant here - things are not what they ever seem to be. I feel there is always dark matter to any situation, it accounts for 85% of our universe after all.

Betrayed by the dazzling beam of light from a passing car in the early hours of the morning, this massive set of scales, the weigher of hearts, is a revealing of the illicit, tempting, opulence that lurks on even our most quietest of streets.

“Art,” said Edgar Degas, “is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

Tipping Point, Hydrangea sp. 1.5 x 1m.
Jessica Rosemary Shepherd ©

With thanks to Amaya for all her help and guidance.

Becoming Blue VI: Blue Sun Orchid - HAUNTING IV

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 03:19:00 +0000

Autumn is coming. I felt it in the air last week and it seems that the Autumnal feelings have cast their roots into this part of Tasmania to stay. There was a freshness and that good old 'back to school' feeling. Not being local to this part of the world I wasn't sure what to expect. Tasmania seems to have four seasons in a day, so I thought maybe this is just a blip, but alas it doesn't seem to be so. I am secretly enjoying it. I love this time of the year and I asked for movement - a change - and it came. I find myself already packing cases. I guess am ready to leave. The contract I had with this place is over - but only for now...

Close up on 'Water'. Work in progress, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Four paintings of four elements, one for each month I spent in the Antipodes. After much thought, I decided to leave them all here. They've been photographed in Stanley and are now in Hobart with the framers. I have no idea what everyone will make of them and I secretly wanted to take them back home with me and hide them in a trunk because I feel these pieces expose just a little too much of my soul. Something came out of me here. I am still trying to work out what that was. It's been a time of deep transformation and alchemy complete with dark, shadowy patches that were frequently interrupted with flashes of unbelievable light.

Oh, life is bigger

It's bigger

Than you and you are not me

The lengths that I will go to

The distance in your eyes

Oh no, I've said too much

I set it up

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream

That was just a dream

Just a dream, just a dream

Dream

Diary entry January 15th:

'Who is this person that I am to cast such a dark shadow on the earth?'

It seems I am still coming to terms with myself as a human being. Ironic as this Antipodean adventure started with a painting of a Consolida. There have been days of gusto, the odd minor blip of feeling lost in a sea of daydream and flatness and then a couple of days like the above where I hated myself so much I thought I would jump off a cliff. Even on the good days, I still had tears breaking out from nowhere. They are not sad, they are not happy. They are just tears of deep knowing and feeling. Tears from silent voices. It is these tears I am holding on to. They are not my tears, this story isn't just about me. I am coming back.

Shadow:

'Even the most beneficial presence casts a shadow. Mythologically, having no shadow means being of another world, not being fully human. To live with our shadow is to understand how human beings live at a frontier between light and dark and to approach the central difficulty: that there is no possibility of a lighted perfection in this life; that the attempt to create it is often the attempt to be held unaccountable, to be the exception, to be the one who does not have to be present or participate, and therefore does not have to hurt or get hurt. To cast no shadow on others is to vacate the physical consequences of our appearance in the world. Shadow is a beautiful, inverse confirmation of our incarnation.' David Whyte

'Fire' Work in Progress, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

I took a leap six weeks ago into oils. It was a terrifying move which I boldly stepped into with a mixture of curiosity, enthusiasm and desperation. I felt I had exhausted all other media and still wasn't getting the results I wanted in picture making. I was also growing tired of watercolours and basically thought 'why not'. The geographical distance and temporal isolation I was experiencing here made it easier to take the risk. If the work was rubbish, it would be ok - I'd just bury it somewhere in the hills and forget the entire thing (would have to bury this time as there was a complete state fire ban). Truth is, I don't really know if they are any good in the critics eye but to be honest I don't care. I know what they are to me. The magic of Tasmania, the lure of the blue orchid, the love of thousands and the alchemy of painting. Paint is stone or ash mixed with water, dried by the air. It has often been quoted that 'paint is liquid thought'. To me, it's just a magic trick, it isn't as linear as thought. It's a ritual. A commitment. A transformation. A revealing. An opening to other worlds. This is what these four paintings are to me. I entered another world.

Fire from the distance as a work in progress. Oil on canvas

Fire as work in progress. Oddly didn't photograph this one face on finished!

On the easel...

Diary entry January 22nd:

'The work that is coming out is too raw for me. I am inches from totally imploding and shutting down all social media accounts because I feel too vulnerable. Maybe that is a good sign? I remember this happened just before Leafscape. It might be the darkness before I switch on the light. If I disappear, that is what is going on. I have reached a limit in my vulnerability and need to hide. If Tasmania has done anything, it's given me space to hide. I still don't want to go back to Europe. I am not watching anything on television, and am not tuning into the radio. There's now very little music being played. I am spending vast quantities of my day staring into space, sleeping, dreaming and feeling. I try not to think, otherwise I go down rabbit holes. Is this the last phase of a very long metamorphosis?'

'Earth' work in progress, oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches

Blue Flower is an adventure into Romanticism; time spent walking the land with no particular direction, the falling in love with things, a longing and it's brought me here, where the true Romantics were until very recently. They walked this earth long before I or even Coleridge and Wordsworth started crisscrossing fields and hedges. Novalis' dream of a blue flower pales into insignificance when matched with the true meaning of Aboriginal dreamtime.

Work in progress on 'Earth' oil on canvas. Blues going on top of a sepia underpainting

Tasmania is a land that was sculpted by the native people and nurtured in a way that we are only just beginning to understand today. Apparently, when the European settlers came here, there were great tracts of land that looked like beautifully manicured parks and meadowland. Cleared, beautiful. The sort of picturesque, Romantic landscape Capability Brown had high hopes on creating in the UK and in true romantic style, the emptiness of its wild landscape now stings with an unbearable melancholy. It's a haunted isle; no more Tasmanian Tiger, no more Tasmanian Aborigines.

Work in progress on 'Earth' - oil on canvas

I have taken myself on a few walks across the land, but not as many as I'd hoped. I seem to keep revisiting the same places as if to watch them through time. I have been time travelling rather than space travelling. I found some new aboriginal middens yesterday at West Point and sat with them. I could hear the chitter-chatter of lost tribes. All that's left is a spoil heap of shells from their meals and the indentations of where their huts once were. The wind blows here, it blows hard and makes a howling noise as it rampages through the fields and squeezes through telephone wires like a devil. The yellow-tailed Cockatoos shriek and the Kookaburras cackle at night. It all feels incredibly sinsiter as if not all is well with Tasmania.

Work in progress on 'Water' - oil on canvas - 30 x 40 inches

I went out last night to remind myself of the otherness of the stars. As usual, nothing was what it seemed, Orion's sword was upside down and a ghostly gibbous moon kept disappearing in the fast-moving mists coming off from all that ocean. I noticed the air was was still for the first time in days. Not a car in sight, no humans, no lights. I felt remote. Superstition is commonplace here, and then, under the flickering moonlight, I understood why. It's a land that seems even too far away for God. I mean, what else can you count on?

Work in progress shot

These four orchids are the tip of a very big Tasmanian iceberg for me and are my entry point into this vast mystical creative space I fell into when I landed here. My inner critic knows that they could be better, but I am running against a clock and the weather has cooled down in the last week and the sun is behind a blanket of hail, slowing drying times significantly. I have to work with what Tasmania is giving me and so they stay in this imperfect, shadow state as preliminary works, the first steps towards something that I hope will be greater.

Water, finished, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

Since arriving in Australia, I have developed a very long reading list of literature to order when I arrive in Europe. Books on dreams, aboriginal culture, psychology and Tasmania. It's going to be a busy six months of devouring and swotting. In the meantime, I have two weeks left. I wanted to squeeze out one last painting of the very first orchid found, but alas the post being so slow I'd only have a week to complete it in and it's just not flowing, so instead I have opted for a series of miniature landscapes. It's also that time of the year when I really need to knuckle down with editing the next INKQ, which, I am delighted to say will come with four A5 postcards of the Sun Orchid paintings. To renew your subscription and secure your exclusive A5 postcards follow this link:

Subscribe Here

Close up on 'Water', oil on canvas

And we're changing our ways

Taking different roads

Love, love will tear us apart again

Air - Work in progress, oil on canvas

Workin progress

With thanks to M & G for their love and support these past two months.

To Maddaddam for opening a gate and lighting the way, to Joss for all her chocolate bars, to Australia Post for shipping everything, David Murphy of the Cow and Calf Gallery in Stanley for photographing what were very challenging pieces, to Wagner framers of Hobart and of course a big thanks to Tasmania.

Becoming Blue VI: Blue Sun Orchid - HAUNTING III

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 10:24:00 +0000

The blue man meets the alchemist in the middle of a city. Both standing barefoot on the pavement, they exchange bags. It was all a dream.

Convicts used to call this place ‘The End of the World’. Where I am, there is a place called ‘The Edge of the World’. Beyond this and beyond me, is the largest uninterrupted expanse of ocean in the world. That is quite something to consider. All that blue.

"The moment that we landed there, upon that fatal shore,

The planters they inspected us, some fifty score or more,

Then they marched us off like hosses, an' they sold us out of hand,

They yoked us to the plough, me boys, for to plough Van Diemen's Land.

As I lay in me bunk one night, a dreamin' all alone,

I dreamt I wuz in Liverpool, 'way back in Marybone,

Wid me own true love beside me, an' a jug o' ale in me hand

Then awoke so broken-hearted, lyin' on Van Diemen's Land."

I have been hiding in Marrawah (translation: number one) for three days. I am no longer shaking. I am happy here. The sun is shining. I might go and ask if I can borrow a push bike so I can cycle to the beach.

Bicycle ride number II.

When I visited this part of Tasmania on November 1^st the place seemed rather different. It was stormy and windy. There were four seasons in a day. On my last night here, a thick, spooky sea mist blanketed the landscape so that you couldn’t see a thing. It felt mysterious and at times, perilous. All the roads here have a dark romance about them. I am particularly fond of ‘Wuthering Heights Road’ and ‘Rebecca Road’. Yesterday I walked down ‘Loverock Road’ and of course there is ‘Comeback Road’. I wonder if there is a ‘Jane Eyre Passage’ or a ‘Dorian Gray Point’?

Went out for a bicycle ride, my first one... To nowhere. Alone.

I found a diary entry for the 4^th November on a scrap of paper which describes my entry into Australia and why no one received any updates until now. At the time I decided to fully embrace the wild. To let go and fall, to see if Providence would swoop down and catch me. This is the life of the Romantic. You have to go to these places in order to paint them.

“Chasing summer, chasing light, chasing blue.

When I arrived in Australia, the sun was rising and I was given a blue house key to number 5. I was full of anticipation. I expected a depth, but it so far hasn’t been an easy ride. Blue tears of awe, grief, loss, pain, joy, and confusion. Buds tightly coiled unwilling to open up. The wind howls. The heath rages. The storm pulses and then there’s the famous blue coat. Blue joy turned to a loss in an instant. Nipped in the bud. Love lost. Dreaming of a future that won’t unfold. I am uncoiling still. Un-coming. Blue moves the goal posts. This is a project that moves, that evolves. I am moving, traveling and the situation moves. Something dark in the Tarkine Forest. A place of contrasts. My fingers are full of dirt. My hands scratched. Rebellious, the soles of my feet still scabbed from walking barefoot a week ago. Emotionally hurt, my insides are ripped. I feel ripped. The trees are ripped. The trees will be felled. This forest is for logging.”

Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18^th Century. It stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical art forms, and rebellion against social conventions. Romanticism's celebration of euphoria and sublimity has always been dogged by an equally intense fascination with melancholia, insanity, crime and a shady atmosphere; with the options of ghosts and the irrational. The name "Dark Romanticism" was given to this form by the literary theorist Mario Praz in his study of the genre “The Romantic Agony’’. Considering this, I guess it is only correct that my foray into Romanticism would lead me to this more shadowy point. To a landscape covered in myth, magic, and murder with a man who would fade into the mists and a flock of orchids that kept their insides hidden. I even met a witch during my first week in Tasmania. A Scorpio, with a rich accent, she was hiding deep in the Tarkine Forest when I stumbled in on November 3^rd.

Arthur River meandering deep into the mysterious Tarkine Forest. Photo taken on my first trip to Tas.

I am slowly being rescued from a fall by Michael Nyman and Jeff Beal in my new pop-up studio. The table is covered in paints, cups of tea, diaries… many, many diaries of which I have dipped into repeatedly. These have helped me to join up the ends of a peculiar story. As I listen to the notes chime across a stave, I find myself being incredibly grateful to have finally been lent my first set of speakers since I arrived in Australia. I needed the music to find my flow. Now, thoughts and feelings are slowly bubbling up ready for filing. ‘Dreams of a Journey’, ‘Trysting Fields’ and ‘An Eye for Optical Theory’. The later of which I find is great to paint to.

Current Palette... Moving away from watercolour

I want to paint a sensual world. Primal law. The rhythm of a landscape and the rhythm of our hearts. Every human here has a space-time machine inside of them. It can open doors as fast as it can close them. Our hearts are powerful and provide us with the key to all things hidden. “A beating heart drives us downward far down to the primal ground, what is encountered on this journey must be taken most seriously when it is perfectly fused with the appropriate artistic means in visible form because it is not a question of merely reproducing what is seen; the secretly perceived can be made visible” Paul Klee. In his work, the spirit of nature and the spirit of the unconscious became inseparable. His paintings have drawn him and draw us, the onlookers, into their magic circle.

Close up on blues... as they dry

I feel I was drawn into a magic circle of sorts. As I begin to inhabit an entire house alone, I am being constantly reminded that someone else is supposed to be here with me. Their ghost lurks in every room. I catch myself talking to them as if they were here. Maybe they are? Secretly. As I start to draw out the first painting, I change tracks. The one I wanted to paint has been put aside, instead, I am going for something far more haunting. The haunting of Tasmania. A place of ghosts, lost tribes and of aboriginal dream time. Dream time…

As I fetch a poem I wrote on the 12^th November I discover to my astonishment that I was already thinking about a haunting back then.

The Haunting

Dew drips from a withered blade

That burns brightly at its tip

Tightly closed blue cups of ecstasy

that hold a thousand delights

Tease

A tightly knitted corset of opal green

Covering layers of shimmering blue satin

and a sweet, sticky nectary

The bit before courting.

Just exploring one another with words.

Just being

in a pub

drinking beer

and not really worrying about anything in particular.

The early days, which are so short

Within weeks, the Delphiums will bloom

Along with his Campanula.

Tall, heady spikes will sway in the breeze

But on a heath shrouded in the sea’s soul,

The buds of the Tasmanian sun orchid,

Shall remain tightly closed

Their dangerous depths hidden

Frozen in time

Like an iceberg

12/11/18

Jung drew an analogy between the psyche and light on the electromagnetic spectrum. The centre of the visible light spectrum (i.e., yellow) corresponds to consciousness, which grades into unconsciousnesses at the red and blue ends. Red corresponds to basic unconscious urges and biological instinct, which merges with its chemical and physical conditions. The blue end of the spectrum represents spiritual ideas; and the archetypes, exerting their influence from beyond the visible, corresponding to the invisible realm of ultra-violet. Jung suggested that not only do the archetypal structures govern the behaviour of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behaviour of inorganic matter as well. This is where I find myself, in the deep blue end of ancient rocks, crystals, caves and dreams.

My pop-up studio in Tasmania. Making headway with the first piece.

Twenty years ago, around the same time I had the premonitory dreams I discussed in my previous post, my mother bought me a present. It was blue-green, had a bell and two wheels. I called her Neptune after the planet and rode her everywhere. She was my freedom. I remember cycling along the promenade on several occasions when I was 14/15 years old thinking ‘I can now go anywhere and at any time, the world is mine to conquer’. Twenty years on, I find myself strapping a blue helmet onto my head and jumping onto a bicycle in my determination to get around this new landscape without a car. I had forgotten about the feeling Neptune had given me all those years ago, despite the fact I still ride her in Spain. As soon as I found myself peddling along a ‘Postman Pat’ sort of road I got the feeling. I suddenly felt like I could go anywhere and could feel those places properly. Embrace the wind, taste the flowers, smell the sea.

First night in Tasmania, I go for a walk alone and it greets me with this

Dressed in blue, the time traveller hands over a stripey blue bag. Dressed in white, the alchemist hands over a white bag. They stand there, trying to eye the other up in heavy Australian heat. Her hands shake in time with the clicking of nearby traffic lights and the parrots of her dreams sing. Will they ever meet again? Will the alchemist summon the time traveler? Will the time traveler summon the alchemist? Is it even in their control or were their paths just mapped out and they blindly followed them in good faith and hope? Maybe it really was just a dream, the ticking of a heart, an opening and a closing between curtains of deep blue velvet.

The ‘massa confusa’ of alchemy.

Acknowledgments:

With thanks to Susan for giving me her copy of Jung when I visited Canberra. Your book has helped me immensely, especially as I grapple through the crash at the end of this Australian entry wave.

Thanks also to Lorraine for giving me a book on Greek Mythology when I was in Hanmer Springs, New Zealand.

Becoming Blue VI: Blue Sun Orchid - HAUNTING II

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 10:15:00 +0000

It’s hard to understand what it is we are capable of until we risk leaving behind what we’ve always known. - Chani

In order for things to begin there needs to be an ending. Here in Australia, I feel that things have slowly come to an end. The studio that I had been using as a base has come to its own end in the form of a lease expiry. The beautiful garden that was just coming into flower outside was packed away before my arrival from New Zealand and all the offices are now empty. As I stroll around the confused space, I find a knot of fairy lights, a coiled hose pipe, the charcoal remnants of a fire and a shovel which cut straight into a mound of fertile compost like a dagger. Everything I looked at on the 18^th December described how I felt. Knotted, burnt out and cut before any cutting had actually taken place. I took a series of black and white photographs with my heart in my throat. I could barely swallow and I felt nauseous. I had a sad feeling that things were very quickly coming to a close and there was nothing I could do but let go of what those four weeks in Melbourne had been. It wasn’t going to be easy to let go, I had become attached.

Australian song: True Blue

Hey True Blue, don't say you've gone!

Say you've knocked off for a smoko...

And you'll be back la-ater on.

Hey True Blue, Hey True Blue

Give it to me straight, face to face

Are you really disappearing?

I think I can say quite honestly that I had never been so happy in my life during those days in Melbourne. The happiness was because of a meeting between place, time and the people. It was a meshing, an optimism, a hope. Now, the place was being dismantled, the time suddenly wasn't quite right and the people were also saying goodbyes and I found myself, after a month of being in New Zealand, feeling quite scared and uneasy to what I had returned too. I felt vulnerable, alone and out of synch with everyone. Even my flight from New Zealand had been held back by a day due to four broken aeroplanes. It felt like Australia didn’t want me back. I’d fallen out of the slipstream about as fast as I had fallen into it.

The habitat of a person I had grown to care for very deeply, was no longer in the window of the building. On the last day, only one thing remained - their distant face in the window and an open laptop. Everything seemed distant. The distance of blue. Just as it was in my more recent dreams, I found myself unable to reach them. My time was over. Our time was over, for now.

"Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head

Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?

When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair.

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind..."

In my desperate attempt to stay on course, I stomped around Melbourne with a big, blue suitcase and hesitantly filled it with oil paints and painting media, later hopping onto a train which took me back to where I was staying in the suburbs. Stomach tight and feeling jittery, my heart and it hopes once again broken. Grief set in.

Work in Progress: 'Christmas 2018'. Watercolour and charcoal on paper.

I said in my last post how after conquering one flower, another one comes into my life and alludes me. I finally conquered the Agapanthus and it's agony... Then the Sun Orchid came in during All Hallow’s Eve and it’s taunted me since. Only this time it is far more mysterious. It's a dangerous heady sort of feeling. Slippery, tricky and confusing, like a picnic at Hanging Rock; a bad dream, a puff of smoke.

"You should grow a beard

A beard to tell a thousand stories never told before

A beard to tell you tales, whilst the fireplace roars

The closing of relationships and the opening of doors..."

I often wonder if I could just settle down with a quiet life or if I am now addicted to the highs and lows of whatever this existence is that I seem to be shaping for myself. I ask why am I pushing so hard? To what end and at what cost? What am I willing to sacrifice and why? A friend of mine has told me to just get on with things actively rather than ask all these questions, but when one finds oneself this far away from anything they know you can't help but ask how you ended up here. It's just who I am as a person.

‘The goal of art is to reveal unearthly life dwelling behind everything, to break the mirror of life so that we may look being in the face’ (Franz Marc).

I spent Christmas in quiet contemplation trying to regain the strength I had somehow lost, whilst preparing to go back to Tasmania on limited luggage. I posted all the materials ahead of me to a house on 'Comeback Road' and laughed out loud as I wrote the address... for that is exactly what I am doing, I am coming back.

Four seasons in a day in North West Tasmania. My view just off of Comeback Road.

I have been trying to finish sketches, but they are all dead pieces of work. I can't seem to distill whatever it is I am trying to distil. I know that the reasons behind this are because I am not focused - there is too much going on in my head and heart and I am still moving around between B&Bs. I have also lost energy and am full of self-doubt. Usually, I paint from emotion, I either project myself onto the plant or the plant does it to me, but now I am trying to incorporate what the landscape is trying to tell me as well. I feel like a conducting rod with electricity pulsing through it and it's almost just too much. I ask myself, why stop doing what you did before? Why not just carry on interpreting flora? The answer is, I have no idea why - again it's just a feeling that I should consider the other elements. So I am considering the bushfires, the history of a landscape both geologically and ethnographically as well as the story of my heart and the lure of blue.

The Wuthering Heights fire in 2016, by Nicole Anderson

“Many crises in our lives have a long unconscious history. We move toward them step by step, unaware of the dangers accumulating, but we fail to see is frequently perceived by our unconscious, which can pass the information on through dreams. A recurring dream is a noteworthy phenomenon. It can anticipate a future event of importance” Jung. I came to Australia because of a series of premonitory dreams I had between 1998 and 1999. Since arriving here, I have seen the people and places that I saw in those dreams. That in itself has been really hard to digest over the past eight weeks. I clearly don't like the mystical as much as I thought I did. I don't like not knowing how or why I had these dreams. How could I have seen half the things I have seen 20 years before I saw them? All I have to run on is the nodal axis of the moon which is a 20-year cycle and the fact I had my Reiki attunement in these years. Did I accidentally open up a portal through time and place? Or did someone else open it and reached out to me? What on earth is going on?

A friendly reminder of the quote that led me into Blue, and how terrifyingly accurate this quote has now become to my own life:

"but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world."

Novalis, from "Henry von Ofterdingen"

First sketch. Charcoal and watercolour on paper. A5 in size.

In these dreams, there is no storyline, just places, faces, voices and feelings. I remember after having them at the age of 14 that I’d somehow end up in Australia. It was just a feeling. I was older in these dreams – a young lady. I felt solid – real, alive. More alive than I have ever felt. Stable. Secure in my skin. This is something I have never actually felt in my whole life. I still don’t, but I wonder if the storm I have had to ride out alone this Christmas is the beginning of me finding a way of being happy in myself and secure in my decisions.

Tasmanian Fire

Now, hiding in an AirBnb on Drummond Street which used to be used to house women who wanted to further themselves many decades ago as well as painters who couldn’t afford proper housing, I am reconsidering compositions. I sit meditating and visualising for hours. It takes hours and hours and is actually one of the most exhausting stages to what I am doing. It's how I work. I am aware the clock is ticking, which really isn't helping this deep process but I have to ride it out.

“What we have to reconquer is the weight of lost reality. We must make for ourselves a new heart, a new spirit, a new soul, in the measure of man. The painter's true reality lies neither in abstraction nor in realism, but in the reconquest of his weight as a human being” (Alfred Manessier).

Tomorrow I will be in 'Marrawah' which means 'Eucalyptus Wood' in Aboriginal Peerapper or 'Number One' and it is where I will be for the next four weeks. I like the fact it can mean number one – because I feel that this is where Blue really begins.

Acknowledgments:

With thanks to the fabulous Amaya for her kindness and guidance over the past 6 months since I embarked on this journey. Thanks to Emily and Chris for their love and care in Melbourne and to Natasha, Bambi, Vida, Tamsin and Poppy of England, my mother and Andrew of Spain, Tiffany of Sydney and Jenny, Elizabeth, Zowie and Sue of New Zealand for their support. Thanks also to Sue of 93 Drummond Street for looking after my canvas, Melissa for letting me use her home in Tasmania, Meg and David for looking after me so attentively these past two months and to Thomas, for letting me be me and for teaching me so much.

Becoming Blue VI: Blue Sun Orchid - HAUNTING I

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 22:11:00 +0000

My life is planned by the movements of petals

It was October and the leaves outside my window were beginning to turn. I carefully packed away my brushes in glass jars and placed a blue drape over my unfinished paintings, mindful that I would not see them again until the year ended with a '9'. It was a funny feeling. Over the past few months, I had been mindful of a great shift occurring inside of me as I prepared for my trip to the Antipodes. No doubt it was another growth spurt from within my chrysalis. It is a long way to travel and I suppose it was inevitable that more 'wisening up' would be required on my part in order to navigate the new landscapes I would be in over the next couple of months. I often find that landscapes on the outside test the ones on the inside.

With the studio mopped I went for a motorcycle ride to the Sierra Nevada before joining a party in the almond groves near Alhama de Granada. Autumn was very much underway - the Spanish air was cold and once again full of the heavy fragrance of olive wood smoke. I inhaled as much of the air as my lungs could take, just in case I missed it once I was absent. I touched the mountain and its trees and picked up a cone before I said my farewell. I was only supposed to be gone for two months, but my bones knew it would be for longer.

Blue Sun Orchid - Tasmania
20cm x 25 cm - tiny sketch :: work in progress
Watercolour and charcoal on paper

I arrived in Melbourne at six in the morning under the cast of an October full moon and as my airplane danced in the city’s airspace, I watched the sunrise like the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odessy. A thin, crescent-shaped flash of light covered the curved horizon. I felt like I was being born. Weeks later, I ripped a thin gash in one of the arms of my black Indian dress - 'the chrysalis is breaking' I thought. Then a week after that I ripped another split in the armpit of my silk shirt as if to confirm it. I thought back to the paintbrushes and the paintings waiting for me in my studio in Spain and then of the lettuces and artichokes waiting for me in England. There are Horcruxes of me scattered all over the place. It was a strange feeling. I pictured an invisible bungee rope which was metaphorically attached to my navel and pretended to twang it. It was stretched as far as it might have been able to go and I was aware of how very far away I was and that I was upside down, and yet my soul had arrived in this landscape before me. Or perhaps it was always here?

I arrived in Tasmania on the eve of an immense storm the day after All Hallows. ‘Another one’ I thought, as I reflected on the days I spent in Scotland looking for Meconopsis. Electrical storms, like me, appear to also be chasing blue. I had never really considered Tasmania as a location before. It was always one of those places that seemed remote and peculiar. It certainly was never on my radar, but I ended up visiting the island because I wanted to find blue orchids and I had been informed that this was the best place to do so. Unprepared, I hopped off of the propeller plane and felt another sense of belonging – only this was more profound than what I had felt in Melbourne. This feeling only deepened as I drove along the island’s winding roads, smelt it’s damp air, touched it’s old soil and paddled in its choppy waters. The days rolled past like the raging clouds in the sky – everything on this isle was saturated with meaning and magic. I was inside a novel, inside a painting, inside a song.

Most of the sun orchids in Tasmania remained dormant in bud as they patiently waited for the storms to pass. You could almost taste the tension in each capsule as the week grew old. Desperate to cross-pollinate I think that in the end many of the flowers this year had to opt for the far less exciting prospect of self-pollination instead. The weather just was not on their side, or, it seemed, on mine. I sat with a several budded stems in a heathland for a few hours while a swarm of mosquitoes and March flies feasted on me. I watched and waited and then watched a little more. Their plump, tight buds becoming heavy with me as we cooked our spells together. It was like looking into a mirror. Partially ripped chrysalises not quite ready to open. The orchids and I were chanting together beneath the folds and sheets of blue.

My life unfurls with the movements of petals and stars. As soon as I understand the workings of one blue flower, another seems to embrace me. With pieces of me spread out all over the globe like pollen, my body begins to cry out in pain and pleasure. It is ready to receive a place and a time. I believe the place has arrived, almost at the start of this journey into Blue, but possibly not the time. I shall return.

....

There are many layers to blue. Six weeks have passed since my time in Tasmania. It is now December 14^th 2018 and I feel my head shifting gear as it readies itself towards practical work after having spent a month in New Zealand. Unable to sleep and pining for a place I have only just discovered, I decided to extend my Antipodean trip for a further two monthsand booked a one-way ticket to go back to Tasmania. I do not know when I will be returning to the mainland and I secretly wish I wasn’t. I bought ten meters of canvas to paint on whilst in Wellington and will be bringing this with me, along with oil paints, paper, and my dreams.

To be continued...

If you want to be taken to the environments I have been in with the power of your imagination and hearing, I have uploaded a few podcasts which combine commentary on the painting process along with field recordings taken from the sights I have visited. I have edited these so that listeners are taken on a non-interrupted journey through the landscapes and they are available here:

http://inkyleaves.buzzsprout.com

Becoming Blue V: The Antipodes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 09:11:00 +0000

In October and November 2018 I was invited to teach several workshops on painting leaves in Australia and New Zealand as part of the first leg of my Blue Flower trip. I was totally blown away by everyone's support and love, not only for what I am doing in my work but for botanical art in general. It is so good to have so many of us working towards getting botanical art out there into galleries and on walls. Enthusiasm is so important and the most contagious type of love.

East of Melbourne in the middle of nowhere

Here are some photographs which were taken during some of the workshops and as part of my expedition to find the Blue Sun Orchid in Tasmania. My journey started in Melbourne where I gave a talk to the friends of the botanic garden soon after touch down. After this, I was whisked away from a city I was growing to love to a place further away from the humdrum near Lakes Entrance. After a few days off grid for my birthday, I then found myself back in Melbourne for a business meeting after having packed for Tasmania. It was touch and go if Tasmania was going to go ahead as severe weather had been predicted, but after much mulling over I decided to go.

Tasmania, orchid hunting in between storms. First week of November 2018

After a week in Tasmania which took me from the North to the South of the island, I was back in Melbourne for four days, before then flying to Canberra for a few days for a workshop. The day after I returned, I then had a workshop at Geelong Botanic Garden and then a day after that I had another workshop at Melbourne Botanic Garden. Then I had a few days turn over before flying to New Zealand for three workshops in Wellington, Hanmer Springs and Auckland. Eventually arriving in Tauranga.

It was a jam-packed schedule. I worked out on December 21st that I hadn't had a single day of solitude since October the 22nd! For an introvert, that's quite a change of routine...

So here are the photographs. I would like to thank Sandra Morris, Sue Wickison, Lesley Alexander Smith, Elizabeth Yuill Proctor, Mali Moir, Dianne Emery, Jenny Coker, John Pastoriza-Pinol, Cheryl Hodges and Amanda Ahmed for making all of this possible. I would also like to thank my friend Meg and her family for their generosity and kindness in helping me with my arrival and for planning such a magical birthday and my friends Emily and Chris for their support and care. I would lastly want to thank my friend Thomas, for his organisation and for teaching me so much. Thank you.

Tasmanian coastline. November 2018

Arthur River, Tarkine Forest, Tasmania, the first week of November 2018

In the ancient woods of the Tarkine in Tasmania. This part of the wood is due to be logged very soon. Some of the work I am doing for blue Flower will be used for an exhibition that is trying to raise awareness of these woods and get them legally protected.

Working in Tasmania. November 2018

Working in the Tarkine, Tasmania. November 2018

Gum forests, suburbs of Hobart, Tasmania, the first week of November 2018

The view from my desk at Sue Wickison's house in Wellington, New Zealand.

Looking for Dragons with Elizabeth Yuill Proctor, Hamner Springs, New Zealand

New Zealand, South Island

Moana, New Zealand. December 2018

In Tauranga with aritst Jenny Coker, New Zeland, 15th December 2018

View from Jenny's garden, Tauranga, New Zealand, North Island

Student's work after a workshop at Otari Botanic Gardens, Wellington, New Zealand.
With thanks to Sue Wickison for organising this workshop.

Workshop at Otari Botanic Gardens, Wellington, New Zealand.

Workshop in Hamner Springs, New Zealand South Island.
Thanks to Elizabeth Yuill Proctor for organising this!

Birthday celebrations during the workshop in Hamner Springs, New Zealand South Island.

Workshop in Hamner Springs, New Zealand South Island.

Workshop at NatureArt Lab, Canberra Botanic Gardens, Australia.
Thanks to Cheryl Hodges for making this class happen.

Workshop at NatureArt Lab, Canberra Botanic Gardens, Australia

Finding a Wahlbergia in Canberra, Australia. Thanks to Cheryl Hodges for taking this shot1

Teaching at Melbourne Botanic Gardens.
Thanks to Mali Moir and Dianne Emery for organising this one!

Teaching at Melbourne Botanic Gardens.

Workshop in Auckland, New Zealand.
Thanks to Lesley Alexander Smith and Sandra Morris for organising this workshop.

Teaching a workshop in Auckland, New Zealand

Workshop in Auckland, New Zealand

Samples of my portfolio on show in Auckland

Class photo in Auckland, New Zealand

Workshop in Auckland, New Zealand

Workshop in Geelong Botanic Gardens, Australia.
Thanks to John Pastoriza-Pinol for organising this workshop and for an amazing lunch!

Becoming Blue IV: The Uncoming

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 14:49:00 +0000

'He smelt of bergamot, paper and oil paint. He smelt of galleries, of picture frames and floorboards. Fragrances just followed him, it was part of who he was. From the jasmine flowers in Onslow Gardens to the slightly sickly Hyacinths in Abbott and Holder. There was always a scent to the story.

'She dwells frequently upon the beauty and the melancholy of nature', Virginia Woolf

'I feel like a caterpillar. I am still not quite right. Something must have happened to me. Something did happen to me, but I can't understand why I can't seem to compute what that was. Was it Leafscape? Was it finally coming to terms with my break up with Henry? Was it my failed move, my failed funding applications or the PhDs? Or maybe it was just Mr. Bergamot, paper and oil paint? I don't know. All I know is there are bad days and some ok days. I am full of hope, but I can't manifest. Instead, I am compositing in my cocoon of hope. Disintegrating at a snail's pace, but it is still too fast for me. I am not even half butterfly or caterpillar, just nothing really, a fertile sludge. This is the hardest bit. The structures I have built around me are no longer working. It would be true to say that I found this Spring hard going, but to be honest it's been hard going since February 2017. It's me that's being hard. I can't work out what is bothering me. I feel like a deep sea diver who's lungs can't quite take the pressure of exploring the depths of this iceberg. So I try to just doggy paddle around the circumference, but it isn't really working. I am now coming to the realisation that in order to grow wings I am going to have to take some risks, both in my art, my writing and in my personal life. This isn't going to be easy'. - Diary entry, May 2018

J R Shepherd. Photograph by Alex Stanhope ©

At the end of May 2018 I was close to giving up. I hadn't felt like that in a while. Nothing was diluting. Everything was still sore and acute and the people I had trusted so deeply suddenly became unfaithful. When I went to bed at night sometimes I could hear voices, or banging doors and occasionally I would open my eyes and I would still be dreaming. I guess this is what can be called a hallucination. I knew it wasn't good. One night I sat and watched a tree growing out from my abdomen. All its roots wrapped around my torso and it grow up and up. I liked how it grew, but I didn't like how it was feeding off of me and that was when I screamed.

"Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else." Isaac Asimov

As I watch the wind batter the winding Wisteria outside my window on a hot summer's afternoon, I continue to unpack myself like a suitcase. Further and further I go... unraveling, spiraling outwards centrifugally, dissipating, dissolving, or as my Antipodean friend Thomas called it: 'uncoming'. I am not sure if this is good. Surely spiritual paths should be about 'becoming'... spiraling inwardly, centripetally, becoming stronger and more integrated? Not fragmented and thin? I reassure myself that you need to unwind in order to wind back up properly. That I am just a cluttered drawer of clothes that needs refolding and that this year I am just in that unpacking stage.

Hydrangea work in progress

It isn't easy being a painter. I think it does have the potential to drive anyone insane. The way to get through the solitary quest is to spend time with other people, but I find that challenging. I begin feeling so inadequate and alienated. I often feel more alienated when I am with other people than when I am alone, so it doesn't really solve the problem. To escape my solitude I keep fantasising about a future yet to unfold.

"I am very interested in art, but I am instinctively more interested in truth [...]

The more I work, the more I see differently"- Alberto Giacometti

As I sit here contemplating for what really feels like an eternity, I start to consider my art and where it is going again. My own personal life feels too intimate to sort out right now - too sore, too complex. The art though, where the art goes my heart goes and the rest tends to follow so I concentrate on that. However, that is where the problem is. I can't even focus on that, because of fear. Fear of consequences.

"[…] but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world. For in the world I used to live in, who would have troubled himself about flowers? Such a wild passion for a flower was never heard of there."

Novalis, from "Henry von Ofterdingen"

Hydrangea work in progress

As a curator I create environments to deliver an experience. As a painter, it is within the parameters of a canvas. as a publisher it is inside a book as a sound artist it is within the grooves of a spinning disc. I like to create environments, I always have, but suddenly I can't through fear. Not the fear of failure, which is something I am too familiar with, but the fear of false accusation. In a world where things get recontextualized all of the time and a sentence you might utter can easily be extracted and reconfigured, I am left wondering why say anything at all? I haven't blogged in months because I am struggling with that concept because as you know my prose are deeply personal. I suppose I don't need to publish them, but I always took the stance that it was good to publish them for one day they might help someone. I publish them as if to leave breadcrumbs so that someone might better understand me and themselves. This blog is a map.

'In some ways I feel like my best version of my own practices is though art marking [...] its a way to create a container for the exploration of awareness and how to 'use' awareness both as an artist and as an audience to get a little unstuck or a little more confused, whichever is better.'
- Thalia Field.

Finally, after months of trying to work it out, I now know why this fear of recontextualisation and misinterpretation has left me unable to work. It is actually quite basic. It is because my paintings always have a meaning, but in this world, especially in the distracted modern day of fleeting moments, the meaning is often lost. Usually, it is enough for a painting to just mean something to me, I don't need everyone else to understand it, but as I metamorphose at a rate of knots, meanings are changing too quickly even on a personal level. There are no strata in my psychology. I am just foam. Popping bubbles that grow and disappear in an instant as I dissolve.

Lost meaning

I feel my identity is disappearing. Jess sort of disappeared last year. I don't know where she went. Jess is decomposing, changing, re-packing. Maybe she will come back one day. In the meantime, I have to try to get all of this onto paper in the form of paint without her, because unlike photographs or digital images, paintings are real. Paintings come from the soul. Paintings are Horcruxes, mirrors, heterotopias.

Hydrangea to scale... still unfinished.

Since I gave up a settled life in England I haven't felt safe and only now I find myself asking 'why not?' We live in a time when being yourself is about the scariest thing you can endeavor. I feel our fear in the 21st Century is mostly about a lurking dread of abstraction and our slight paranoia of being misunderstood or represented.

Inky Leaves is a painted experience through the eyes of the world's flora. The leaves, flowers, petals... they are my muse. After a long time grappling in the dark and going around in circles I have taken a step out of the shadow. It's early days and I am full of bubbles, experiencing great change. Change of the most difficult kind. Change in beliefs. Change in assumption. Change in my sense of reality and my place in it.

"We hope that our armored professional personalities will prevent us from having our hearts broken in work, but if you are sincere about your work, it should break your heart. You should get to the thresholds where you do not know how to proceed. You do not know how to get from here to there. What does that do? It puts you into a proper relationship with reality. Why? Because you have to ask for help" David Whyte

As with Leafscape I am still obsessed with spaces and scale. I find painters usually are. To have a scale is to have space. With Leafscape the leaves became the terrain. Today, where things aren't wholly real and fact is fiction and fiction is fact, I am reminded of boundaries and context. How what is made when you have a boundary is, in fact, a space, a territory or landscape. Michel Foucault, in “Of Other Spaces,” claims that “our own era…seems to be that of space. We are,” he suggests, “in the age of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, the near and the far, the side by side, and the scattered.”

I have always felt that my paintings are not striving for realism and have often said this. In fact, I think it was one of the first things I said when I started 'Giants in Thimbles', that I was never striving for the realism or a uni-faceted sense of reality as we know it. How could I when I spend most of my days in a dream? I paint my experience using the flower as my muse. I project my experience and observations of the world onto my flowers. Which in other terms - all the flowers and leaves I have ever painted are in fact self-portraits. I would guess that this is why I am often frightened by my own work because they are like looking into a mirror and to be present means you have a responsibility and such a notion is actually quite frightening.

'The only place where things are actually real is at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you. That whatever you desire of the world will not come to pass exactly as you will like it. But the other mercy is that whatever the world desires of you will also not come to pass. And what actually occurs is this meeting, this frontier. But it’s astonishing how much time human beings spend away from that frontier, abstracting themselves out of their bodies, out of their direct experience, and out of a deeper, broader, and wider possible future that’s waiting for them if they hold the conversation at that frontier level. Half of what’s about to occur is unknown, both inside you and outside you. John O’Donohue, a mutual friend of both of us, used to say that one of the necessary tasks is this radical letting alone of yourself in the world. Letting the world speak in its own voice and letting this deeper sense of yourself speak out.' - David Whyte.

Becoming Blue III: Consolida - FORGIVENESS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 17:02:00 +0000

Things are taking time, but I am making progress. I have invested in a car. It's a leap of faith that I have been putting off for ages but in the end I decided to commit. He's black with a very large boot and blackout windows. I have named him Diego after Valaquez. He has the same initials as Darth Vadar. In fact, he probably looks a more like him if Darth was ever reincarnated as a car, but I went with a painter's name in the end. So here we are, another step towards the travelling part of Blue.

Consolida (2018)

As I start to learn to drive again I find myself having to re-acquaint myself with many other old skills whilst learning new ones including how to use sound recording software. These are the frustrating stages I have to get my head around before I can really start to grapple with Blue. It's frustrating as there is nothing tangible to show for the time put into learning (yet). However, I am enjoying the process of becoming broad.

So I continue to feel very much as I am starting from the beginning again. Up until the end of May I was still in a very lonely, dark place. I am not sure what it was. A dark realisation most likely. Nature can be dark. It also can also be miraculous. I am trying to concentrate on that. However one cannot have one without the other, we all cast shadows, and as a painter I feel drawn to explore the dark shades of what I have been feeling for the past 15 months. Rabbit holes are dark places. Wonderous, but, like my car, dark.

'To live with our shadow is to understand how human beings live at a frontier between light and dark; and to approach the central difficulty, that there is no possibility of a lighted perfection in this life; that the attempt to create it is often the attempt to be held unaccountable to be the exception, to be the one who does not have to be present or participate, and therefore does not have to hurt or get hurt.'

- David Whyte

Blue Rose, Columbia Road Market, 2018, Watercolour on Saunders Waterford paper. No Charcoal.

In my search for something cathartic and mystical, I have been looking at the work of religious painters and the paintings of El Greco. I have also noticed in my sketch work and daydreams things are starting to become out of focus and the proximity of the flowers keeps changing. Sometimes I am a fairy enveloped in the petals, sometimes I am just hovering above like a ghost-seeing it all laid out in front of me. Pinned to a board as if to be dissected.

As I carry on exploring this enclave*, I am noticing that what I am starting to tackle is most likely the notion of flower painting, which is actually quite different to anything I have ever done before. For me, flower painting still falls under the umbrella of botanical art, but it is moving further away from the scientific end of the spectrum and closer towards the more artistic end, the more emotionally descriptive and mystical.

Consolida, Covent Garden Flower Market, London 2018, botanical painting by J R Shepherd (2018) Work in Progress.
Watercolour and Charcoal (powder and pencil) on paper.

In my last post, I touched on the distance of blue and how for me it describes the eternal longing or desire for things. This is why for me, blue has always been a romantic colour and the colour that sparked the Romantic movement in 'Blue Blume'. I nodded briefly to the Romantic Movement when working on Leafscape when I looked into the elements that go to make up Gothic horror. These themes still to beguile me. But what makes blue 'blue'? I find it is a colour who's meaning can readily changed by its context, by neighbouring colours and by lighting. You can make blue happy just by upping the brightness or its intensity. You can make it sad by lowering the saturation and its clarity.

My Consolida is my consolation and consolidation as I learn to forgive and re-build myself.

- J R Shepherd

Lately, black backgrounds have begun to lure me in just like they did four years ago when I first arrived in Spain. At the time I didn't know why I wanted to paint dark backgrounds, I just played around in the dark not even considering it. Now, however, it is May 2018 and I am sitting in my very English room wondering why I am drawn to paint black backgrounds again and then finally the penny drops. It is from being in Spain. I have been influenced. Spain's stark contrasts continue inthrall to me. The shadows on the white walls and under the canopies of popular trees. Its the darkness we see in Ribera paintings and of course those of Goya. Ribera is my favourite Spanish painter. It's difficult to writtle them down, there are so many and if El Greco was Spanish I'd probably choose him. However, the intensity of a Ribera painting is what I find so entrancing. The perfection of his painted fingernails, the red robes and the endless blackness around. I want to paint like this. I want to paint with intensity. So now I am changing tactics in my attempt to combine the elements of Mannerism with the Romantic.

St. Paul the Hermit, Guiseppe Ribera (1635 - 1640), Oil on canvas, 118 x 98 cm.
Paul of Thebes is known as the first Christian hermit, living alone in the desert from the age of 16 years

The incredibly dramatic illumination we see in these dark Baroque paintings is called, Tenebrism (Tenebroso in Italian) which can be translated into English as very dramatic illumination. Chiaroscuro is another kind of play on lighting in painting, but I feel it isn't the same. Tenebrism seems to be to be more dramatic and the tenebrist artist’s tend to use more darkness in the light-dark contrast while the chiaroscuro artist’s use more light. Famous tenebrist artists are Rembrandt, Gerrit van Honthorst, Francisco Ribalta, Jusepe de Ribera and Georges de La Tour. Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few women artists of the Baroque, was an outstanding exponent of tenebrism.

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

Tenebrism came into popularity around 17th century in Italy and some parts of Spain. Chiaroscuro on the other hand was already famous from works created in the Renaissance era (around 14th century). Although the artist Caravaggio is generally credited with the invention of the tenebristic style, this technique was used much earlier by other artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, Tintoretto, and El Greco. There were probably lots of other painters too who have just faded into their murky black backgrounds since their time as forgotten ghosts. This sadly happens all too often, even now.

Mary Delany (1700-1788) - Centaurea cyanus, formerly
in an album (Vol.II, 79), 1779 - collage of coloured papers,
with bodycolour and watercolour.

What I am doing is nothing new. Barbara Regina Dietzsch is very well known for her botanical paintings on black backgrounds, as is Mary Delany for her botanical collages and then there are all the Dutch Masters. More recently artists Coral Guest and Rosie Sanders have both produced works with dark backgrounds/space. Currently, my paintings are not painted using black per se, but with a mix of Winsor Blue (Red shade) and Perylene Maroon, working to keep it all to the blue end of the spectrum. I want the whole pieces to be blue.

Barbara Regina Dietzsch 'Delphinium with a Butterfly), Gouache

For the first darker piece I chose to paint a Consolida, which is also known as Larkspur. I heard one of the gardener's talking about them when I went to Great Dixter last June (just before I dispatched 300 INKQs containing 'The Kiss: Onslow Gardens') and so it seemed like a good flower to paint. It was the next flower on my extraordinarily long list. Furthermore, I feel my visit to Dixter really was quite pivotal in many ways. In helping me to close the painful doors of the past and encouraging me to venture onwards. I had to travel through Brighton station, (where only 11 months earlier, the Cheshire cat had bid me farewell) so that I could get to Rye. Without Dixter, I wouldn't be planning my first long-haul expedition to the Antipodes. Funny how things flow.

'To forgive is to put oneself in the larger gravitational field of experience than the one that first seems to hurt us.' - David Whyte

Maud Purdy's 'Heavenly Blue Morning Glory' (1932) Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Consolidae, and their close cousins Delphinium, are stately spikes of eye-catching blossoms in astounding shades of blue. The name Delphinium is derived from the Greek word 'δελφίνιον' (delphis), meaning dolphin, for the nectary's resemblance to the bottlenose of a dolphin. The world Larkspur originates from 1570s, from lark (n.) and spur (n.) to describe the resemblance of the calyx and petals to the bird's long, straight hind claw. Delphinium are native to the Northern Hemisphere and historically, were used by Native Americans and European settlers to make blue dye, and across the pond, it was the primary source for ink. 'The juice of the flowers, particularly D. consolida, mixed with alum, gives a blue ink' (Figuier, 1867).

Early stages of the Consolida painting working with charcoal and watercolour

The background of this painting was painted using charcoal powder in the mix with watercolour paints. I guess it is the gum arabic in the paint which acts as a binding agent, stopping the charcoal from falling off. The bonus of combining charcoal powder in the paint is that it removes shine and brush marks, so you are left with a very velvety surface that absorbs light like Vanta Black. With the Consolida, I have tried to 'bring' the background into the plant to create black space by using a charcoal pencil on the flowers themselves. I like the effect, but I am not completely sold, so I am still experimenting. The second painting, 'Blue Rose', has been executed only in watercolour. For this painting I decided to do something that botanical painters don't usually do and paint a flower that is not natural. A Rose that has been deliberately altered by mankind using synthetic dyes as representative of our unwavering quest for perfection and the darkness this obsession can bring.

'To cast no shadow on others is to vacate the physical consequences of our appearance in the world.'

- David Whyte

There are many sides to blue. Love and loss come hand in hand. Joy and pain. The breaking down of things, and the building up. My Consolida is my consolation and consolidation as I learn to forgive and re-build myself. To forgive is an act of love and compassion. It is a skill of generosity and of understanding and truly necessary if one is to live a full life. Consolidated, I now more able to step out of my enclave and beyond.

*The word enclave is French and first appeared in the mid-15th century as a derivative of the verb enclaver (1283), from the colloquial Latin inclavare (to close with a key). A parcel of land surrounded by land owned by a different owner, and that could not be reached for its exploitation in a practical and sufficient manner without crossing the surrounding land.

In the meaning of flowers, Delphium is about enjoying the lighter side of life, even when troubles get you down and expanding your options and attracting new opportunities.

Blue Rose as a work in progress. Watercolour on Saunders Waterford paper.

Bibliography

Karen Wiese, (2013), Sierra Nevada Wildflowers, p. 52

RHS A-Z encyclopedia of garden plants. United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. 2008. p. 1136.

Jabbour, F., and S. S. Renner, (2011), Consolida and Aconitella are an annual clade of Delphinium (Ranunculaceae) that diversified in the Mediterranean basin and the Irano-Turanian region. Taxon 60(4): 1029-1040.

Figuier, L. (1867). The Vegetable World, Being a History of Plants. Harvard University. pg 396.

INK Q II

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:45:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I hope you are well and having a superb summer. It's been a while since I have updated you on Blue Flower and the work I am doing with INKQ so I thought I'd check in.

I am well and have been incredibly busy. This summer, while I was documenting blue flowers in the UK, saw the arrival of our second issue of INKQ. A collaborative sci-art project, INK Quarterly is a new quarterly publication curated by me. It is early days for the project, yet I am delighted to say that Issue One was very well received; Galleries Magazine called it "spellbinding" and it has already sold out. There still some copies of the second edition, which features the stunning camera work of Anna Laurent whose photographic botanical studies move beyond the decorative to fascinate and inspire. Her concise but insightful piece on the life and work of Anna Atkins serves as an interesting counterpoint in the development of botanical photography. Equally, Ashleaf's bronze leaf sculptures take us beyond the usual depictions of living flora.

The overall theme of Blue is carried through this issue of INKQ by Niki Simpson, who gives us a seasonally apt study of bluebells and Jenny Balfour-Paul who ponders the history and uses of Indigo. The wait is finally over to see my latest finished artwork. Not to be reproduced in any other format, my painting titled 'The Kiss; Onslow Gardens' reveals itself as a whole page spread (23.4 x 33.1 inches) which is good enough to frame.

Beautifully packaged and presented and printed on recycled, lightweight paper reminiscent of newsprint, I feel that the fragility and near transparency of the pages resonate well with the content of INK. Limited to 300 copies and available by subscription only. If you have already subscribed, your copy will be landing on your doormat imminently and if you haven't, you can subscribe here and be captivated.

In other news, I have started a new podcast channel called Inky Leaves Podcasting which is also available on Spotify and Stitcher. Akin to INKQ, my hope is to explore and share the work of other artists whilst documenting my progression into the colour Blue. My intention is to bring the sounds of the world to your ears as I travel the world's terrain looking for blue flowers. The podcasts act as an audio sketchbook before I embark on making my final soundtracks for Blue Flower in a few years time.

Sound is important in my work because it informs. A noise means something is happening. Let's say you look outside your window and you can see a forest. Over the year, your eyes can record subtle changes in the forest, such as changes in the season, but what makes the forest come alive is its sound, not its scenery. Sound lets you know that the forest is alive and sudden noises such as a tree falling down, tells you of an event. Sound is movement and real.

Larkspur, work in progress. Watercolour on paper, 56 x 76 cm

This summer I must have visited a record number of gardens and wild spaces in my search for Blue Flowers. The highlight was visiting Scotland where I was able to record one of the best years for blue Meconopsis blooms. I am still formulating the final compositions for these pieces; experimenting with new media, from oil paints to charcoal, in my attempt to capture the mysterious, dream-like quality of some of our blue flowers.

As ever, it is fabulous to have you on this adventure with me. The world can sometimes feel like a lonely, scary place but by working together and telling each other stories I feel that we make it better. With that, I will leave you with a short video posted on Instagram last June by Ashleaf as she opened her copy of INKQ for the first time... The subscription is a flat rate and includes the cost of postage to anywhere in the world because we are here, floating in space, together. To receive four editions of your limited edition newspaper while stocks last subscribe here.

And if that wasn’t enough for aweinspiring content, here is a high quality full A1 sized page of @InkyLeaves Agapanthus Blue Flower painting in the second issue of INKQ.
.
Order your copy now:https://t.co/EqgPF5LyqN pic.twitter.com/MDAdyr0RRi
— ashleaf (@ashleaflondon) June 20, 2018

In case you missed our stories yesterday - we’ve just had an article published about our bronze leaves and the foundry in the second issue of INKQ by @inkyleaves . Subscribe to receive a limited edition copy on Inky Leaves Publishing website.

A post shared by ASHLEAF (@ashleaflondon) on Jun 20, 2018 at 7:10am PDT

Becoming Blue II: Agapanthus - LOVE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 06 May 2018 08:46:00 +0000

'Love, at first sight, is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory... This scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune, to meet what matches my desire'.

- Barthes, A Lover's Discourse Fragments

Up close on The Kiss: Onslow Gardens. 2018

I wake up. It's February 11th, I am in Spain and I feel flat. After a cup of tea, I stick my head into my wardrobe to see what I can wear. I have a lunch invitation so my usual 'hermit' wools will not do. The smell of an old fragrance comes out from between the folds of fabric. How I dislike delving into this heap of cotton and viscose. My hand traces the patterns of embroidered flowers, buttons and ribbons. My most prized dresses wait patiently for my return. Reds, yellows, greens and whites. Each garment holds at least one memory. I can feel my throat becoming tight, it's all too much. I am not that girl anymore. As I begin to grieve for a version of myself I grab the nearest black polo-neck, belt, and jeans and shut the door tightly, thanking myself in the process that I left most of last summer's bundle of clothes in the bottom of an English wardrobe. The famous yellow gypsy skirt being the most memory-filled weave of them all. I symbolically ripped a hole it as I hopped over the railings of Onslow Gardens on that fateful night. After the event I felt that I couldn't dispose of the yellow skirt and decided to deal with it another day, stuffing it into a bag at the bottom of my British wardrobe.

The Kiss: Onslow Gardens, J R Shepherd, Botanical watercolour painting, 1.5m x 1m, 2018. SOLD

I guess I am still broken. I suppose we all are to some extent. I miss him. It's taking every ounce of my energy to focus on what I am trying to do, to regroup. Like a car backfiring I have good days and bad days. I stop-start. It's been 12 months since I fell under love's spell and it hasn't faded. It's still as bold and blue as it was the day it encircled me. In my desperate attempt to get these emotions out I have been slowly chipping away at a large painting (above) which has mostly been painted from my imagination. These are the Agapanthus flowers my friend Natasha gave me in Vida's Plimsoll blue flat on Edgeware Road (see the previous post 'Introduction') last August.

'Lost in the warmth

Of the blue heat haze...

Kiss me again

Kiss me

Kiss me again

And again

Greedy lips

Speedwell eyes

Blue Skies...

In beauty's summer

Blue jeans

Around ankles...'

- Derek Jarman, Delphinium Days

As usual, I have played around with the flower heads and the light sources to accentuate the blue petals. I wanted to generate a dark half and a light half and, most importantly have two heads. For me it was essential to have two heads butting or kissing. Your choice - love seems to produce either effect quite sufficiently! It also had to be a big painting; a painted elegy.

'A good elegy is always a conversation between grief and celebration. The grief of the loss of the person and the celebration that you were here at all to share the planet with them'. - David Whyte

The Kiss: Onslow Gardens, J R Shepherd, Botanical painting, 2018. SOLD

'The Kiss: Onslow Gardens' describes an event that took place, a moment of passion, a moment of lust. A lapse in judgment. It is both about love and the lack of it. It is the chaos of kissing, the budding of ideas, of hope and the awkward separateness of two people who don't really know each other. Two stems - two people. One is upright and proud, that's the gentleman, the other is falling, that's me, falling in love or falling into darkness, into grief.

'Some things are meant to be

Take my hand, Take my whole life too

For I can't help falling in love with you

For I can't help falling in love with you'.

- Elvis Presley, Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss.

This painting is supposed to be claustrophobic, rude and conflicting. The bottom buds are seeking different paths, growing in opposite directions. There is harmony but it is hidden under the spell of the moment. In the spirit of an augmented 4th, buds emerge from the darkness of a Medusa head. The flowers are the same, and yet they are not. Like my leaves, they are trapped in a space too small for them. They are holding one another whilst at the same time crushing one another. Respect has gone out of the window. It's beautiful but also grotesque. The buds in the foreground begin to look otherworldly, alien and mutant. Nothing is quite what it seems.

'And we have this physical experience in loss of falling toward something. It’s like falling in love except it’s falling into grief. And you’re falling towards the foundation that they held for you in your life that you didn’t realize they were holding. And you fall and fall and fall. But then there comes a time when you finally actually start to touch the ground that they were holding for you. And it’s from that ground that you step off into your new life.' - David Whyte.

In English, the word "love," which is derived from Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh (desire), is a broad term, which often leads to problems in its true meaning. I find that such issues can be resolved if we consider the Greek terms, eros, philia, and agape in our attempt to categorise love. The term eros (Greek erasthai) is used to refer to that part of love which constitutes a passionate, intense desire for something; it is often referred to as a sexual desire, hence the modern notion of "erotic". In Plato's writings, however, eros is also held to be a common desire that we have in our search for transcendental beauty - the particular beauty of an individual which reminds us of the true beauty that exists in our world.

Close up on the Blue Agapanthus flower. J R Shepherd 2018. SOLD

In contrast eros, philia entails a fondness and appreciation of another without the passion. For the Greeks, the term philia incorporated not just friendship, but also loyalties to family, the political community, and a job/skill. Lastly, agape refers to the brotherly love for all humanity and our planet. Agape arguably draws on elements from both eros and philia in that it seeks a perfect kind of love that is at once a fondness, a transcending of the particular, and a passion without the necessity of reciprocity.

'The deeper blue becomes, the more urgently it summons man towards the infinite, the more it arouses in him a longing for purity and ultimately, for the supersensual'. - Kandinsky

Goethe believed that blue was a darkness weakened by light. Scientists believe that it is the light that got lost. For me, it is the colour of our desire. It is there to be lost, to be both far and yet near and to be both light and dark at the same time, like the sky, the sea or the bottom of a swimming pool. When I think of blue I think of Georgia O'Keefe signing her letters 'from the faraway nearby' and still wonder if she was describing a place, or a state of being.

Close up on the Blue Agapanthus painting. Watercolour on Saunders Waterford paper..

As humans, I find we live day by day trying to eradicate the paradox of desire from our lives either through consummation or with denial and suppression. It seems we cannot simply watch and listen to the feeling of our desires bubbling inside of us without response. To touch them without grasping.

Western society has lead us to believe that desire as a problem to be solved. We want to close the gap between us and the object of our desire. We don't like the longing and so we don't like the gap. Sadly, we have not been taught how to deal with the distance involved in desire. We don't understand that we can enjoy it in the same way we can enjoy a vista without having to parachute into it... If we could live with our longing in the same way that we take in the beauty of a landscape or the texture of a musical composition I feel we could own that experience much more fully and be more able to deal with loss. As you move, the vanishing point moves - you will never arrive in that place you saw from far away, just as you will never have that person. 'Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are more beautiful than comedies and why we take a huge pleasure in the sadness of certain songs and stories. Something is always far away' Solnit (2005).

'Blue comes to us through silence and mystery and much argument. The word we use for blueness was not in every language and arrived late. In ancient Greek the word for black may have been used for blue.' - Rebecca Solnit

Its now mid-April and my vanishing points have moved. My studio is metamorphosing into a papery version of Francis Bacon's as I continue to work on Blue. I think I might have bitten off more than I could chew with this one. It is no easy task. But then I think how long it took to find the leaves and then I realise planning is everything and good ideas take a long time to come. Picasso shut himself in a barn for 9 months and did 800 drawings before he came up with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. I am about eight months in and I am no Picasso, but despite this, things are starting to resolve. To make things complicated, in the months between I got places to study for a PhD at both Central St. Martins and the Royal College of Arts and tried moving back to the UK. I did this more out of fear than anything. A safety net in case it all goes wrong and to find a way of being pushed because I felt tired of pushing myself. I know I am not alone in this. There is a huge responsibility that comes with freedom and sometimes it is just easier or less scary to give it to someone else to sort out. To let someone or something else build the structures in your life and control you.

Agapanthus botanical painting as a work in progress. 1.5m x 1m. Watercolour on paper. 2018.

Maybe this is a sign of maturity and my coming to terms with the nuances of melancholy and the complexity of longing. Sometimes we can only have something fully by not grasping. I didn't lose the object of my desire, it's just he is far away and with that, I wonder if we ever really lose anything at all? If we can remember something or someone and carry the picture and sounds of them in our hearts and minds, then really these things are very close, and even in times when you think you have lost or forgotten them, after decades they return to you in the form of a dream and you reminded again, that the object of your desire, the love, was not lost, it was just far away, distant and beyond sight. Such is blue. It cannot be grasped but it lingers. It is not the light that got lost, but the light we forget. The light inside.

'Blue Bottle buzzing

Lazy days

The sky blue butterfly

Sways on the cornflower

Lost in the warmth

Of the blue heat haze

Singing the blues

Quiet and slowly

Blue of my heart

Blue of my dreams

Slow blue love

Of delphinium days'

- Derek Jarman, Delphinium Days

As I edit my second chapter on blue I begin to realise that for me love and grief are two edges of the same sword and go hand in hand. You just can't have one without the other so I had to touch on it.

'Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.' - David Whyte

The unfolding petals in 'The Kiss: Onslow Gardens' documents a very short segment of time, just a few hours on a warm summer's night - June 28th 2017 - but it took months to paint. It is a painting of lust, but also of loss. For the first stages, I couldn't even see what I was doing with all the tears pouring down my face. My face was as wet as the paper. The first washes were applied back in October 2017. It is now April 2018 and I have only just put in the finishing touches. Despite everything, the 28th June 2017 is still very fresh. It wrangles out of the usual confines of time and space and transcends like the colour blue. As I apply the last brush strokes I reflect on how one cannot construct a life without being vulnerable and with that, I decide to be a bountiful inhabitant of loss, for it is the only way to love.

The Medusa head of love

Bibliography

Aristotle. Poetics. Trns. S. H. Butcher. The Internet Classics Archive. Ed. Daniel C. Stevenson. Oct 2000. Feb 15, 2008

Bloom, Harold. Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Minds. New York: Warner, 2002. 122-130.

Hamblet, Wendy. “The Tragedy of Platonic Ethics and the Fall of Socrates.” Feb 15, 2008; http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/ethic@/ethic22ar2.pdf>

Jarman, D., (1993), Blue

Kaufman, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.

Knox, Bernard. Notes. Antigone by Sophocles. Trns. Robert Fagles. Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Philips, C., (2007), "Socrates In Love", Norton, New York

Plato. Symposium. Ancient Philosophy. Ed. Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2008. Vol. 1 of Philosophic Classics.

Segal, Charles. “Spectator and Listener.” The Greeks. Ed. Jean-Pierre Vernant. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. 184-215.

Solnit, R., (2005), A Field Guide to Getting Lost.,Viking; New York

Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays. New York: Penguin, 1984, Oedipus the King, Trns. Robert Fagles. Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays.

Love, Despair, and Transcendence: The Tragic and Platonic Views of the Human Condition

Whyte, D. (2015), "Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words", Many Rivers Press

Whyte, D. (2009), The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship, Riverhead

Whyte, D. (2001), Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as A Pilgrimage of Identity, Riverhead

Whyte, D. (1994), The Heart Aroused: Poetry & the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Doubleday/Currency

The end of a chapter. The Kiss being wrapped for transport to England - April 2018

Becoming Blue: INK Quarterly Proofs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 18:26:00 +0000

Hibiscus flower, 11 x 14 cm, Watercolour on paper, SOLD

I am very excited to be able to tell you that on the anniversary of Leafscape we managed to get hold of the printed proof pages for our first INK Quarterly newspaper and, thanks to your support, they look great!

For those of you who don't know, inspired by the work of Yves Klein, my intention was to make a newspaper as a piece of art - to question what a newspaper actually is and what it is supposed to do. With this, I decided that I wanted to make something that was both informative and good enough to put inside a frame. This entire adventure into newsprint explores not only how we treat print today, but poses questions about its future is in a digital world. INK Quarterly is a composite stage where artists, scientists, philosophers and historians can participate, exploring their ideas in a space without boundaries, without convention. This is a little different to what we are used to in the modern world. This document we have created without boundaries is rather like the internet or a printed 'utopia', but I guess we are just not used to seeing it in printed form. Print seems to have the association of being more logical. Yet it isn't the internet or a utopia because it is not limitless - these are limited in edition and limited in pages. Therefore really, when thinking about these things, this is something completely new.

Laying out the pages of INK Quarterly. Designed by J R Shepherd and Browse Digital

All of the editions will be limited in number and will be printed using lithography by the same printer who helped us with Leafscape. Therefore this is no ordinary newspaper. It is a collector's piece. I am only printing 250 for the first edition and worldwide postage is included. If you are interested in subscribing or want to know more, please follow this link or get in touch: www.inkyleavespublishing.com/inkq. I am happy to answer any questions.

Close up on page 3 in INK Quarterly. Designed by J R Shepherd and Browse Digital. Article by Rob Kesseler.

Right at the beginning, I originally proposed for INKQ to be spread across two sides of an A1 sheet, but after laying out some of the amazing articles I have received, I have decided to add a page onto the first edition. This is inevitably costing more money, but I think it is worth it. Therefore please share this project with your friends and family or anyone who you feel might be interested, as having their support would really help. All funds raised go back into the project, so if we manage to get many subscribers, we could all end the year with a newspaper of many pages!

Hibiscus flower, 10 x 10 cm, Watercolour on paper, £150

Other news is the painting aspect of Blue Flower is still being planned out and prepared in the studio. I am still waiting for many of the blue flowers to come into bloom, so I am hiding in my studio making small study pieces and trying to finish my large Agapanthus piece titled 'The Kiss: Onslow Gardens', which I am painting mostly from my imagination now. This often happens towards the end when painting live material on this scale. You can read more about what inspired this painting in this blog post.

So with that I will sign off. Big thanks go to all of our contributors who have kindly chipped in for the sake of the project, sending in their articles and artworks without a fee. Without their help and your subscriptions, INKQ wouldn't be possible. This is very much a collaborative piece of art.

Don't forget if you want to support the work we are doing, you can find out more about INKQ here: www.inkyleavespublishing.com/inkq

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

The Kiss:Onslow Gardens - a work in progress. 1.5m x 1m. Waterccolour on paper

Becoming Blue I: Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 10:01:00 +0000

On a sunny September afternoon, as tired leaves rustled in the garden beyond her window pane, she opened her book 'An Inquiry into Blue' and took out a flatted, knotted mass of black and brown hair that she had collected from a bed at Kensal Green several weeks before. Then, with her other hand she opened an indigo bound copy of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and placed the hairs between pages 32 and 33. Once closed, she took the Antwerp blue scarf that was wrapped around her neck and tied it around the book before hiding it at the bottom of her wardrobe...

Agapanthus flower bud study, Watercolour on paper, 21 x 30 cm. (2017)

I plunge a large fishing net into the depths of a turquoise pool to fish out hundreds of yellowing leaves that fell from the trees I watched so carefully for three years. Catalpa, Mulberry, Fatsia, Conker and Judas, they were all there, floating and rotting like ghosts in a blue haze. Funny how things can be so symbolic. I sit and watch for a while as the low December sun pokes its head over a roof top, casting a halo of light through a blue sky. White squiggles dance in the blue watery rectangle, playing with the lost leaves at the bottom of the pool.

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths (Solnit)

A story is not always what it seems. Life is a wonderland full of hidden mysteries, most of which will never be solved. After a year of deep introspection, I finally feel I can begin the written element of my journey into blue. It's taken me months. From the first moment when the seed of an idea was sown back in 2015, I have spent many afternoons trying to consolidate blue, but it is a colour that cannot to be captured or ordered and what I have come to realise is to have spent my afternoons under a setting sun on Worthing beach devouring books on blue was about as useful as reading a book on yellow. You see, to understand blue one has to dive into the shade. Blue has to be experienced.

IMAGE: Howard Hodgkin 'Swimming'

Project Blue flower is so multifaceted that I don't really know where to begin when it comes to the blog or the printed Inky Leaves newspaper. In the end, after six months of contemplation I made a bridging post called 'Down the Rabbit Hole' back in May when, like Alice in her blue dress, I was tiptoeing around the edge of an illusory chasm after Leafscape.

IMAGE: Sir John Tenniel

Blue is the scattering of light. Like the soldiers under cornflowers, it is lost. This displaced light is like a inconsolable rubix cube. The colour refuses to be ordered into chapters; it won’t be bound by rules, grammatical or otherwise. Blue is nebulous and has mushroomed at different points of my life to date. Like a fungus, it is always there, lurking between the shadow and the soul and tends to only reveal itself during times of utter ecstasy or despair. It litters the optimistic blue skies of holiday snapshots and percolates through my darkest pain. It’s the colour we turn when we are dead and the colour we often are when we are born. It is the colour that sits between the physical body and consciousness. Like for Miro, it is the colour of dreams.

People often associate the colour red for love, but I have never felt this myself. To me love is always blue. Its purity, it’s escapism and its disorder is encapsulated by blue. For me, to be in love is to be lost whilst becoming totally aware of the vulnerability of your body and your soul, and when you enter that space and dive deep, you strike that blue vein like a pot of gold.

The earth is like a blue orange (Paul Elvard)

Henry, who I was with for almost five years, used to have Miro's Azul II Lámina hanging above his bed. I always thought it was a good place to hang a painting such as this. Blue was Henry's favourite colour, he wore it all the time. When I moved in next door I remember buying blue curtains in the hope he would spend more time in my room. Needless to say it didn't work. The bitter sweetness of blue. We spent our last holiday together driving a friends Chevy around California, the interior of which was all upholstered in the deepest velvet blue.

Joan Miro, 'Azul II Lámina'

Blue is the colour of longing for the distances you never arrive in (Solnit)

When I met my first love, Alex, he gave me a Decaisnea pod. He had just picked it from a tree on Mount Edgcombe. Also known as ‘Dead Man's Fingers’ it was a fairly odd thing to give someone. I remember seeing the pod and thinking how unnatural it looked. All that blue. I tried to keep it preserved, but like the relationship it decomposed and the blue faded with time. Refusing to be captured, it seems, 'for blue there are no boundaries or solutions' (Derek Jarman).

Decaisnea fargesii pods

The last three years of my life have been dominated by shades of green, and for a while I didn't feel blue, that was until this summer. This time my total submersion into the tone would be sudden and deep. It was like I had been transported into a David Lynch film with its blue keys, blue boxes, blue roses and blue velvet - nothing made sense, and yet it did.

Work in progress, Leaf 200820171240, Acer macrophyllum, Kew Gardens.

So there I am, slap bang in the middle of a Lynch. I am trying to prepare for an afternoon coffee in Chelsea. For some reason I didn't have my burgundy beret with me, so my friend Natasha lent me her Navy blue one. I only realise now that I was wearing a blue hat, with a blue top and of course, blue jeans. This was the day when I opened my door to the Cheshire Cat. I'd already been following the White Rabbit of my ideas, but then this Cheshire Cat came into my life under the cast of a winter eclipse. There was something very 17th Century about him. I always felt that he should have had a musket, square buckled shoes and a plumed hat.

'Lord and Lady', Watercolour on paper, two paintings on separate pieces of paper as a pair. SOLD

I saw Mr. Cheshire again a few weeks later in Chelsea after having found a plastic sparkly unicorn on a chain on the floor. I was wearing my Laura Ashley blue corduroy dress and reading 'Blue Mythologies' outside Sloane Square tube station. He was late, and I was cold. After visiting an art fair we ate dinner in the Blue Bird on Kings Road and talked about how dangerous hope is, both coming from opposite ends of the lens of course. Me the optimist thinking it as a weapon for good, he the pessimist thinking it inevitably leads to disappointment.

Blue is paradoxical; it is self-contradictory, yet true (Carol Mavor)

Three weeks lapsed and on the day of a full moon, we met in Brighton and visited its Palace. Then, after walking the length of the pier, he ended it. Just like that, like a bolt out of the blue. We walked in silence to the train station and parted ways after I gave him a love note I'd made on blue paper. It was terribly sad.

The last leaf of Leafscape - reaching out - Leaf 90520171506. SOLD

We love to contemplate blue not because it advances us, but because it draws us after it (Goethe)

In French bleu means both the colour and a bruise. I was bruised and alongside all of this I was desperately trying to keep all the Inky Leaves saucers spinning, which was quite a task. I had problems with the second book as I was dissatisfied with the quality and had to keep asking for it to be redone. Inconsolable, I ran away up to London and slept on a friends sofa. The sofa was upholstered in the same blue velvet as the Chevy I'd driven around California in 3 years earlier. I lay there, crying as she painted the walls of her flat a dark 'Plimsoll Blue' around me. Then my other friend came over with a bunch of Agapanthus flowers and placed them in a glass jar in front of the blue wall. The scene was like a Greenaway film. I felt like my mood was changing the set design of this flat.

Like Cessil's invisible cobalt ink, the cat and our story line quickly became intangible and indefinable. I tried to retrace things, marching through the ecstasy and the agony of it all in order to define what had actually happened. Naturally I failed and several months on I am still failing to understand its bitter sweetness. I feel confused, lost and helpless - like man who was swept away by the (blue) Danube after picking his lover a blue Mysotis flower and shouting 'Forget-me-not!' It's now December and unlike the bruises on my neck, the bruises in my heart haven't healed. These are still blue. Blue from the joy that it actually happened to the blue me grieving having lost him and myself in the process.

Agapanthus work in progress 130 x 98 cm
'Onslow Gardens'
Watercolour on paper

I died a little death this summer. I will never be the same person again. It happens, it's life, but this will take some time to recover from. With the blueness of nostalgia I think backwards and with its optimism I think forwards. I take the scarf from my neck and wrap it around the only thing I have that tells me he was real and not a dream and I start my first flower: the Agapanthus.

Unicorns and cannonballs,

palaces and piers

Trumpets, towers and tenements

Wide oceans full of tears

Flags, rags ferryboats

Scimitars and scarves

Every precious dream and vision

Underneath the stars, yes, you climbed on the ladder

With the wind in your sails

You came like a comet

Blazing your trail too high

Too far

Too soon

You saw the whole of the moon

(The Waterboys)

* All of these events are true.

Becoming Blue: Inky Leaves Podcasting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 17:45:00 +0000

I am happy to announce I have published my first podcast!

'Inky Leaves Podcasting' is a channel that will focus solely on promoting botany and botanical art through audio. Here we get to listen to artists, collectors and curators and, as time passes, I hope to track my own adventures into blue when I begin my travels in search of blue flowers. The Inky Leaf broadcast will probably evolve over time to feature different soundscapes mingled with interviews. For now, I intend to post on a fortnightly basis in 30 minute slots.

I am very excited about the venture and hope that it will not only be of interest to us as botanical painters but also to other audiences who would not necessarily think about botanical art and its applications, but who tune in online via other portals such as iTunes or Spotify.

If you would like to listen to our first programme where I talk with Denise Ramsay about painting in her studio in France please click here.

Denise Ramsay

Blue Flower Manifesto

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 15:08:00 +0000

(German: Blaue Blume) A central symbol of inspiration. It stands for desire, love, and the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable.

IT SYMBOLISES HOPE AND THE BEAUTY OF THINGS.

Until 2024, Inky Leaves will be immersed in the colour blue as she explores what this intense and captivating colour means to us culturally; why regardless of race or religion, it is the worlds’ favourite colour and why paradoxically it is so rare in nature.

Jess will be travelling across the globe as she searches for the most beautiful blue flowers and exploring their natural habitats in order to determine their origins. It will be a journey not only of scientific value but also artistic discovery. While seeking out and documenting these rare and exotic plants, she will also be recording the sounds of the countries she visits, photographing some stunning locations and discovering new and hitherto little known pigments with which to paint blue.

As Blue Flower consolidates and evolves via the prism of Inky Leaves, Jess will be looking at new ways of depicting the nature and beauty of flowers in art. Blue Flower is not a theoretical and rational study of botanical art, but is an exploration of the visual directions in which the natural world can lead us.

Blue Flower will result in a fascinating and diverse presentation. A traveling multi-media exhibition is planned and will coincide with the publication of an accompanying book, soundtrack and film.

IT’S GOING TO BE BIG.

IT’S GOING TO BE BLUE.

You can follow the project on blogger and the offical webpage for the project is: www.inkyleaves.com/blue-flower

INK Q

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:52:00 +0000

2018 is the year of INK Q – a new art newspaper by Inky Leaves.

Printed on recycled, lightweight paper in newsprint font, this quarterly paper is here to deliver something that inspiring and interesting to your directly to your door. Focusing on art and the natural sciences, we have some of the worlds most celebrated artists, historians and scientists contributing to the paper. There will also be articles written by J R Shepherd.

This paper is designed to be a piece of art in itself; something beautiful that can be collected and treasured by you.

With the launch of INK Q coinciding with Jess’ own new adventure into blue the first editions will have a blue theme. Subscribers will also get the opportunity to be involved in a collaborative piece of work. The gateway for subscribers opens on 29th October 2017 here:

INK Q