27/07/2012 - 25/08/2012
Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that is concise, recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived linking Nature to human nature. This record neither describes nor defines, but “diminishes to the point of pure and sole designation.” With my work I am trying to achieve a visual Haiku.
My studio overlooks the marshes and as I watch a flock of birds, one minute they are sitting there and the next, through some ancient unspoken method of communication they are all off together in a mass, wheeling as one, silver as they turn and catch the light and then dark as they turn away. Some events in nature cause us to stop and forget ourselves as we are caught in the moment.
I would like to convey this moment in my work, to evoke a memory giving the viewer back a piece of unhurried time – a time of natural rhythms, which we are in danger of losing as “clock time”, reified as a commodity valued in monetary terms, threatens to engulf us.
I have experimented with bronze and other media to create birds, which may or may not be figurative, but which contain the essence of ‘birdness’ and capture a sense of vitality and movement. I have found myself working in an in-between world, painting, drawing and sculpting. There is a sense of movement as the eye flits between the painting, the wire and the shadows. There is the action of the drawing and the static of the bronze, a complimentary playful opposition.