The only way I can see beyond the heavy sadness and anger I carry in me for the dividing and othering that humans do in order to protect boundaries and the notion of ownership of bits of the planet, is to ironically walk on the local bits of the planet that though 'owned' have rights of access (though many of these are being lost and contested).
As artists or makers or poets,writers or musicians, we cannot separate ourselves from the realities of what's going on globally, the internet makes sure that our concerns keep being stoked (rightly) but at the same time it can be crippling creatively and have a negative effect on our health. Being on and in a landscape, moving through it, having eyes to see pattern, light, movement and ears to hear the sound of the wind the call of a raven the fall of water; somehow changes the heart and mind. It allows us to grieve but also connect with deeper time. I find myself sometimes in a state akin to prayer where I'm calling from deep within for an open heart and eyes to what is more than us and our competitive nature. We need to keep moving, to work things out, to find meaning. There are many humans doing this, crossing boundaries reaching out beyond western societal norms, and this action gives me that old fashioned thing called hope.
I work things out by walking and sitting and sketching, bringing those sketches back to a room in our house I grandly call a studio. The making of drawings and bricolage is part of this working out. A process of learning how to see and feel the land.
I'm reading 'Mountains of the Mind' by Robert Macfarlane, and in that book he links the moving through a landscape with the expansion in our understanding of geology and deep time. I suppose for me and others of us, making and marking is a similar thing to physically exploring a space. There are many artists who work in this way, it is a visceral process that links our mineral bodies to the mineral geological landscape.
I think I might have a bit of Paul Nash in my blood somewhere, having recently revisited his work, along with those artists around in the early 20th Century. I'm completely out of step with current art movements in terms of what I'm producing now, but I can still enjoy the 'new' and learn from it. Opening up has been a wonderful thing.
Paul
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