This iconography was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light to reveal itself by a form. A shower of lights and of intelligences. Luminous olives with trails and bent stem. Projected rays. These falls of lights, intelligences, understandings, according to the degree of their virtue will constitute the spirits of varied hierarchy and the beings which will reach carnal incorporation.
The 'inscape' is what I am visualising when I mentally delve down below the skin. It was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who I think first defined the "Inscape", using the word to refer to the unique, inner identity of a thing, as well as a human being's interior mental landscape. Baraduc's use of the word I presume is in acknowledgement of Hopkins, who coined the word "inscape" to describe the inner essential character or "thisness" of a natural object, person or landscape. For him it was the distinct, dynamic pattern that constituted a being's identity, often perceived by Hopkins, as a fleeting, sacred and intense moment of beauty that revealed that everything was the result of God's creation and therefore at its core it had to be beautiful and wonderful. Hopkins uses 'inscape' to wondrous effect in his poetry. In 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire', each element has a special something that is essential to its being. the kingfishers catch fire as opposed to the dragonflies drawing flame. Just close your eyes and think of them both and their differences. The sudden dart of a kingfisher is like a flash seen against the dark of a river bank, the dragonfly flits along, its wings drawing flame as it crystallises the sunlight and dances with it from flower to flower. Hopkins sums up his idea in the phrase, 'Each mortal thing does one thing and the same', telling us that everything has a unique something that is essential to its identity.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: illustration in 1862 letter to Charles Luxmoore
It is no surprise therefore that Hopkins loved drawing and was in his drawings looking for that unique something that was essential to a thing's identity.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Landscape: Flowing water
Text and image flow together in Hopkins, his awareness of the visual nature of reality penetrating his words as well as his eyes. His landscape is an 'inscape' as well as an 'outscape'. His drawings being very straightforward, with no pretension, simple records of a few moments of looking.
Beech, Godshill Church behind Fr. Appledercombe
Drawing of flower forms
Hopkins also draws in his letters, in my mind perhaps at exactly the same time that Van Gogh was drawing in his letters. Both men were of a religious cast of mind, Van Gogh wanting to become a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. His intense piety leading him at one point to work as a missionary in Belgium, Hopkins converting to Catholicism and working in both England and Ireland as a priest. Both men found a way to embed their piety into their art, one into painting and the other into poetry.
The 'iconography' as Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc termed his images, that sits at the top of this post, was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light. Baraduc is like Van Gogh and Hopkins of a religious cast of mind. I tend to think of my own work as touching upon some sort of secular idea of the other, of spiritual forces that are more in common with the findings of contemporary physics, both which nevertheless seek to probe beyond what we can see and feel with the limits of our outer perceptual organs. Our inner feelings it seems to me are still surrounded by mystery and never fully open to objective clarity. It is in that gap between knowing and intuiting that art can operate and as it does I make no apologies for it touching upon the spiritual, an admission that I know will be for some readers also an admission of failure and I will be accused of hiding behind the mumbo jumbo of mysticism but if so, so be it.
An exploration of interoceptual feelings: Painted glass
I'm writing this post in a hotel room in Ganz, resting up after a day hosting workshops and working with the curators at Forum Stadtpark. The installation that houses my work, is one that is in my mind designed to echo the environment of an older man, like myself, who lives in a room of his own, unlike myself, that is composed of furniture he bought back in the 1980s. As the environment was constructed I was reminded of an older post, whereby I was reflecting upon how then current exhibitions were being hung. As the installation evolved, minds were changed many times but hopefully we got there in the end. Today there is going to be a 'round-table' and I get to speak about what I'm doing. Tomorrow the exhibition opens.
Poster advertising tonight's talk
As I put the talk together for this evening I begin to wonder about 'instress': If 'inscape' is about that inner unique identity of things, 'instress' is the force or energy, that holds the inscape together and allows the viewer to experience it. Instress was seen by Hopkins as the power that carries the inscape into the mind of the observer. I wonder of that could be another name for 'art'. Thinking of which, here are a few shots of the exhibition.
Some of the lino cuts made as votives
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