Fair weather friends

The wind. A hare. Suzanne Treister

I walk out on a good and blustery day, with the sole intention to be alone; only the wind for company. I listen closely to the wind, sure that it would have some tales to tell having wrapped itself endlessly around this world. Is the wind silent when it rushes up in the atmosphere? Do the air particles themselves make a sound, or do we only hear the wind when it hits the trees, fluttering leaves and howling down the chimney? The wind hits my ears and howls down them, too. It tells me that humans are not worth talking to, that they are only interested in made up things like money and politics and boundaries. Nonsense. Nothing to care about. Humans, arrogant enough to say that man made things are not a part nature, as if they were not a part of things, as if they were not dependent on this earth. The wind doesn’t converse with humans; it steals building materials from the house building operation down the road and leaves them around the fields. I’ll keep working on it though; maybe one day, when I live in the forest in a house with chicken legs, the wind will whisper its secrets.

All four cormorants are back at the lake, sitting sentry in the dead tree. They have the lake on timeshare with the bats. If you sit long enough at dusk you can still see a pipistrelle wing past if the weather is ok, because they roost in the trees behind and it’s warm enough one might pop out for a snack. The daubentons and noctules abandoned ship for winter roosts weeks ago. The days of serious bat parties are gone now. Now is the season of the cormorant.

I thought maybe they might increase in numbers again this year, but then, perhaps four cormorants is the maximum a small lake can support. Seems logical. The trees are looking threadbare if you get up close. I still hope for a few weeks of colour yet, but eddies of leaves dance across the golf course, while more fall down to join them, a veritable autumnal snow globe. I might be overly optimistic. I don’t normally walk here if there are golfers playing the hole, but these ones only pace slowly while staring at the ground, which is a lot less dangerous than regular golf. They haven’t played the whole time I’ve been walking. I silently point out the golf ball lying on the grass as I pass, so they can get busy knocking it into the lake. The ball is white and it seems obvious to me amongst the leaf speckled grass, but they delightedly seem to think I am some kind of genius for finding it.

I smile mystically at thier praise. Maybe I am good at noticing things, for a human, anyway. Why not accept compliments at face value? Why always modestly downplay them? Golfballs, cormorants, wind blown leaves, a clump of mushrooms. Someone ought to notice them.

Workings

Hares are available here

I could probably do a framed one if you ask nicely, but that hasn’t been listed. Thanks for you orders last week, they all mean a lot. I’ll be working on some smaller, more affordable prints soon for stocking fillers and such so keep an eye out here:

Findings.

This week I popped into Oxford to go and see the Suzanne Triester show at the museum of modern art. I’d seen some of the postcards for sale in the museum shop and decided it was worth paying to go and see- the prices are a fraction of what the Ashmolean charges anyway, so it seems like a bargain. Sadly you can’t leave and come back in after having a rest, which I really think an exhibition of this complexity needs. A day or two of digestion. There are also insufficient seats. Really insufficient. Other than that, I enjoyed it, especially her later works. I’m not so interested in the early video game stuff.

You might think my interest is paradoxical; I have no personal interest in a lot of what she explores, being more interested in nature than human activities and finding AI and generative art abhorrent, but I am interested in the tarot and psychedelic plants and creating fictional characters. I’m fascinated by her kabbalistic drawings. For want of a better term, I vibed with those works, getting it on a more than intellectual level. I don’t really want to talk about the works though, I don’t feel qualified, but it’s a good show and worth seeing if you are around.

Sometimes I get art on an intellectual level, but without this deeper feeling, it’s never going to resonate. Sometimes, as an artist myself, I am interested in a technical level too. I don’t have that with Suzanne Treister. It’s more like the feeling I have with William Blake; I am pretty certain that I have no idea what’s going on but somehow get it through commonality of expression. Feelings like these are why seeing art is amazing.

Another thing I realised is my enduring need to buy the exhibition catalogs, which is an expensive hobby I can ill afford. I always wanted to be the person making sketches al fresco, despite vastly preferring to drag little bits and bobs home and draw them in the safety of my studio. In the same way I want to drag bits of exhibitions home and enjoy them in the safety of home too. It’s a sort of fundamental part of my nature; maybe in order to feel creative I have to feel safe, and thats not possible out in the society, a human designed world that is vaguely hostile to people like me. I should probably stop trying to fulfil an ideal that goes against my actual nature and learn how to lean into being myself.

Anyway even if you buy the catalogue you should still take pictures if you can- I couldn’t find my favourites in the book but luckily I’d taken a cheeky photo for my journal. Also very much admire the book highlights the barcode in gloss day glo pink on the back there. Sorry about the photo- it was taken in darkness, some days the sun just doesn’t rise. See you next week!