OUT THERE SOMEWHERE

Out There Somewhere Oil on linen 36 x 36 cm

Happy New year to all of you! Bring on 2012.

The painting above is a new one. I've given it a title which comes from the last two lines of a poem written by my grandmother D.E Ross. In 1986 my grandmother and mother, Elsie Brimbelcombe, published an anthology of poems called 'Out There'. At the time of publication my grandmother was 87 years old. She had written poems for most of her life, apparently having her first poem published in a Western Australian newspaper when she was fourteen. Grandma-ma died at the age of 92, so she had a pretty marvelous innings.

Here's the poem I've taken my title from. It is in the anthology and is also called:

Out There By D.E Ross1.

I do not cringe before the opening door
to Outside,
but brace muscle and mind
to meet
the open horizon
its fresher winds
the brighter light
undreamed of in the chrysalis:
each cloud a carriage
each breeze a wing
each star a stepping stone
beyond Time
-before and after-
toward the secret
of its source
and mine.

11.
There are no boundaries
Out There
but the original laws
that devised
creation.
neither north nor south
or east and west,
above
below
or here and there
No tides,
but streams of power forever flowing.
Time is not negotiated
wasted or lost:
an hour rates high in our accounting here:
yet a thousand years
could be held as a breath on the wind
Out There.

111.
There is no waste in God’s economy.
New solar systems
gather grace in space
[along with waste
from our allotted span of influence].
In God’s eternal meld
of warp and woof,
of foul and fair,
we have each one of us a share
in a new heaven and a new earth
aiming for birth
Out There
somewhere.

This poem at one level is about dying. My mother, very bravely recited it my grandmother's funeral in 1991. Yet, as the years go by, and the more I think about the things I think about, I see that it is also about life...or how life could be...with imagination. As I read this poem I sense that the women I paint, as they float across the ripples created by my much loved trees-of-life, are upon 'the open horizon' swept by 'fresher winds' as they shed 'the brighter light' at the same time as they are drawn to it. The women in my paintings represent eternal Mother, Mother Nature, and my grandmother's line 'each star a stepping stone' creates visions of life traversed across the Universe...and indeed possibly the Multiverse.

'Out There' can also be 'read' as imagination. This is particularly conjured in the second stanza of the poem where, 'There are no boundaries', and the simplicity of descriptive compass directions, and the banality of 'above below or here and there' disappear as concepts of boundary and restraint are forsaken to welcome 'but streams of power forever flowing'. Our imagination has the potential to be this powerful force where possibility is entertained and where wonder provokes questions never before dreamed of....and thus answers from seemingly 'out there'! As the poem suggests in the last paragraph, 'we have each one of us a share...in a new heaven and a new earth...aiming for birth...Out There...somewhere.'

Imagination and spirit, seem to me, to be pretty obvious pals!

In the last stanza, my grandmother refers to solar systems and the 'waste from our allotted span of influence'. She was very interested in cosmology and would often take me and my brothers outside to watch the amazing night sky. She knew all the constellations and could identify planets. She was concerned about the waste or rubbish left in space, as well as the detritus polluting Earth. In fact, another poem in the anthology 'Out There' is called 'Residue' and is about the clues our rubbish gives to our character.

Out There in my grandmother's mind, was a place...the capital O and T give this away. But, place does not have to be only physical. It can be in our dreams, in our individual imaginations as well as our collective ones, within our psyche. I love how Out There could be where multiple perspectives, close and far-nano and macro, are experienced simultaneously. As regular readers will know, I have a great interest in concepts of perspective, especially as we need new ways to 'see' in an increasingly gloablised world in which we live locally...also because the Universe/Multiverse is compelling us out there by revealing its secrets.

Multiverse oil on linen 80 x 100 cm

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FOR EVERYONE: WORDS AND PAINTINGS

More information HERE

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com

The Morning Dew of Wonder

Tomorrow the sun will also rise to the occasion of another day with equal grandeur. Such is the nature of that morrow which today has already seen, yet it greets us each time afresh with the morning dew of wonder in its eyes.

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Caterpillar - Woolly White Wonder

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

~Albert Einstein

This caterpillar seen 09-03-11 - Pandapas Pond - Blacksburg Virginia

Monarch Butterfly In Flight - A Simple Blessing

Life holds so many simple blessings, each day bringing its own individual wonder.

- John McLeod

JUST WONDERING........

The Beginning Gouache on paper 15 x 21 cm

Do you ever remember, as a child, wondering about life and the universe? I do. I wish I had that same infant intensity or perhaps, it is really a wish for more time to wonder. I certainly remember wondering how IT all began. How far did space go? How far did time stretch? When did life begin? These questions took up quite a deal of space inside my head especially in those years before I went to school. Ha! School! Whilst it was initially ok, it soon bored me to tears. I remember it being a place of tedium and repetition where wonder went out the window! Secondary school was a bit better!

My grandmother D.E Ross was a poet, author, painter, accountant! and thinker. She wrote a poem about me which I think captures the frustration I felt at not being able to solve the problems my BIG questions posed. Here's the poem:

A tiny grandchild

  barely four years old

    sits chin in chubby hand.

       long distance in her eyes.

Whatever is the mattter, Katarina?

   I have sad thinkings,

      she wistfully replies.

The line long distance in her eyes. tells me that my grandmother caught me at a time when I was wondering. I still feel as if my eyes lose focus when I daydream or wonder. Yet, at age 'barely' 4 I did not have the vocabulary to explain to my grandmother that I felt frustrated. The word 'sad' was the only alternative!

I've written about my grandmother before, most recently at 'The Beginning of Everything' post http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/11/beginning-of-everything.html

The Beginning Of Everything Oil on linen 90 x 180cm

My mother Elsie Brimblecome is also a poet, author, painter, educator...not an accountant! She has a B.A, B.Ed St, and a M. Ed [research] all from the University of Queensland. The latter two degrees completed via external studies from our farm outside Dalby and with 3 children under her feet! My mother wrote a poem called 'Catching Time' which I think illustrates a wonder. So many of us wonder about time!

Catching Time

By Elsie Brimblecombe

When in the lengthy stillness

Of a time before counting

I held within my grasp

The seasons and their fruiting

The suns and moons of morning

Burst asunder from my keeping

And delivered the glory

Of their light in sharing

In the very act of thinking

I apportioned light a place

So high in the scheme of things

That forever and a day

Knew nothing of the smile of heaven

Before the fall of evening

Resting in the moment never passing

I caught a ghost of time

in a net shining casting

Outside the cradle of the present

And there thrashing ever floundering

The great creature of the mind

Lay trapped

In hours and days and past and future

Never ceasing.

I love the last stanza! Makes me wonder!

My mother has an exhibition of her paintings currently hanging at the Brisbane Square Library, 266 George St, Brisbane until end of April]. She has called the exhibition 'Art Based On Text' because the paintings come from 3 series of work, each inspired by the written word. These are Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', Artur Rimbaud's 'Les Illuminations' and Brisbane poet Ynes Sanz's anthology 'Fanny The Flying Housewife and Other Stories: Poems for mad and magnificent women'. [published at www.lulu.com by Ynes Sanz, Brisbane, 2009]

Brisbane Square Library web site: 
http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/facilities-recreation/whats-on/venues/index.htm?q_venue_id=211

Here are two of my Mother's paintings inspired by Ynes Sanz's poetry, with the accompanying poem.

Mother of Invention: Name unknown, inventor, date of letter 1933, other dates unknown Acrylic on canvas 2010

Mother of Invention: Name unknown, inventor, date of letter 1933, other dates unknown
By Ynes Sanz

'Dear Sir' she wrote, seated at the pine table
with its faint sour smell of yellow soap.
Outside the rain slipped gently
from bent guttering to the verhandah edge
where last year's pressed tin toy would be found
when the house-paddock grass browned off again.

Rolled gold nib and her narrow wedding ring
gleamed back the woodstoves comfortable glow
among the smells of stewed tea and drying boots,
and linen airing on the clothes-horse, where
white pinafores and cut-down trousers
hung ready for the Sunday drive to Church.

She breathed in time with every downstroke
of the marbled fountain pen. So little
rhythm for her in the unfamiliar tool,
the words began to run away,
shake free of the lines and float outside,
to settle in the tea-tree with the wrens.

She saw her children playing on the windrow,
past the yeard where piebald pigs were capering in their mud,
saw her husband, repairing fences on the hill,
small against the too-green Gippsland grass,
this man who collared-and-tied, sodden and shaken up,
drove their old truck to market and to Mass.

Returning to her task, she spelled it out
in her plain cursive hand. Asked the Ford boss could he build
a cross-breed of a car: part coupe and part box.
With his help, she would be the midwife
to the thing that like herself, would grow in time
to be a farmer's steady mate. He said he would.

Scones set to rise, she sits and stares across the years,
bent fingers trace the worn pine table top.
Outside, the hill paddock still stretches up blue green
nearer to heaven with each coming spring
and Jess is barking, splashing through the creek
to grand-children come calling in the family ute. 

I love this poem. It's the country girl in me!

Matron: Irene Melville Drummond, war hero, 1905 -1942 Acrylic on canvas 2010

Matron: Irene Melville Drummond, war hero, 1905 -1942

By Ynes Sanz

who doesn't yearn for mother love

a courage-under-fire kind of love

the mentioned-in-dispatches variety

the sort of love that [when you're in waist-deep with guns at you back and no way

home]

can still find the heart and the guts to say [looking straight ahead so no shared glance will make you crack]

very steadily [so that on hearing her voice you don't falter]

spelling it out very clearly [so there can be no mistake about her words]

something that will never leave you

like 'Chin up girls, I'm proud of you and I love you all'

then

nothing

Other women whose lives inspired Ynes to write poetry about them are: [there are 40 in total in 'Fanny The Flying Housewife']

Amy Johnson, pilot, 1903 - 1943

Josephine Baker, exotic dancer, 1906 -1975

Gertrude Stein, writer, 1874 - 1946

Susan Trevers, 'La Miss', French Foreign Legionnaire, war hero, 1909 - 2003

Doris Taylor, founder, Meals on Wheels, 1901 - 1968

You can find more of Ynes's work at:

http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/03/ynes-sanz-man-in-black.html

http://commonshrew.blogspot.com/

So, back to wonder. Ynes's poems make me wonder about the lives of others, those brave and magnificent hoydens embracing life. Her poems make me wonder about Ynes's own wonderings, the catalytic links and inspirations that spark those first words of any poem. I wonder about my mother's wonderings, my grandmother's wonderings. Poetry and art [of all kinds] gives others a special insight into the artist's mind and indeed, soul. It is a private and intimate place which conjures and creates gifts for you and me. These gifts can be tangible, but I suspect the most precious gift is the invitation to wonder too.

Cheers,

Kathryn

http://www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com/

Be Aware of Wonder

taken last year during one of our ice/snow events
How many of us go through our days unaware of the wonder around us? Every moment we have on this Earth is a unique gift, and we should cherish those moments and use them wisely ~ And be aware of the wonder around us.

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

~Robert Fulghum

WONDER

After a couple of weeks not painting I am now back into it. I was distracted by the preparation for two presentations which both went well. I have to say, though, I prefer being in my studio on my own. Venturing into the public arena is always fun, but I need to recharge my batteries with some alone time in my studio. The recharging is under way.

The good thing about a break is that it can cause a departure from previous work. Others may not pick up on the departure, but I am aware of it. I used to fight it, but now I welcome it knowing that any departure is a result of new experiences, rethinking and reflection...even if it has only happened in a couple of weeks.

In my presentation for the Qld Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Queensland University of Technology Art Museum I spoke to the topic 'A Critical Space: The Art/Science Nexus'. One of my suggestions was that both artists and scientists have insightful powers of observation. This might happen to a greater or lesser extent in individuals, but generally speaking acute observation is a capacity which is shared by both scientists and artists. Both may observe their physical surroundings but they will also observe their reactions to and thoughts about these observations. It is one thing to observe with your seeing eye, but to observe those things which sight might trigger in the imagination where the capacity for wonder exists is another level of observation.

Artists and scientists will make internal critical judgements about their wonderings. This is where there is possibly a departure in manner because the desired outcomes are different. And, it is a good thing there is a difference, because I believe art must avoid the trap of thinking it can provide answers when it has the power to prompt questions. However, science is driven to find answers albeit knowing that any answer must be refutable. Questions keep science honest, but only to the extent of the quality of the questions. Art is one of science's partners pushing for questions based on wonder and imagination.

The power of observation ranging from observing the external to then observing the internal paths of imagination and wonder is a dance of close and far distance. The artist and the scientist employ powers of perspective to view their physical world and also their own internal worlds. Interestingly I have written the plural for internal 'worlds'. This poses interesting questions about the space or distance which is inside each of us.

The painting above is called 'Rain Brings Hope', gouache on paper, 30 x 42 cm [unframed]. It is from my 'Water' series of works on paper.