The innocence...

... of objects.

Lollipop colours

 

lollipop colours -
here today
gone tomorrow

Winifred Nicholson: unknown colour

 

Inspiring me to actually make it to Kettle's Yard was the current exhibition in the adjacent gallery of paintings by Winifred Nicholson. She was a close friend of the founder and the collection includes a lot of her work - too much to keep it all on permanent display. I loved a number of these paintings a lot. In truth, though, she's not the best subject for a blogpost, since online reproductions don't remotely convey the subtle fire and ice of colour in her work.  

This is from an article, distributed at the gallery, that she wrote in 1937:

" Any true colour picture gives out light like a lamp. In twilight it looks like a luminosity, in a better light the difference in the colours begins to tell, and they grow more and more distinct, markedly individual, as the light intensifies to fall back again into a luminosity, a glow if the light wanes. It is only in the clearest, most unclouded light of the sun that you can see the greatest attenuation and differences of hue. The same yellow is quite a different colour on a clear grey day than it is is on a day of Mediterranean sunshine. So, the scale of colour is held within the fullness of sunlight, which is forever breaking apart, revealling its diverse hues, contrasts and affinities and then closing again upon  this scale in the oneness of white light. "

More of her writing is here.

Into the past

This is the final photo from the Kettle's Yard post, of course. What on earth made me start playing with it in this particular way, I've no idea. But I like the result. The best impulses often come from somewhere indefinable and in no way conscious.

Kettle's Yard is, paradoxically, both an intense experience of presence (this very moment's light, through a window or reflected in a mirror, on picture, sculpture, furniture or carpet placed with infinite skill and care) and a direct link to the past.

It's a link to my own past, arriving as a student in Cambridge in 1972, the last year that Jim and Helen Ede were still living there and welcoming students and the public to view their art collection in their own home (and did I appreciate the full wonder of this then? Alas, no. But I did visit). And it's a link to a farther off past, to the 1920s and 30s, when Jim Ede was a curator and friend of many of the artists whose work he began to acquire - being there brings them, and their time, close.

Sepia reflection: for Mindful Writing Day

Sun on water: flickering sepia reflections in the surface of a muddy puddle resolve into the outline of a tall, nearly bare tree.
 

Today is Mindful Writing Day: follow the links to join us and to download a free Kindle copy of A Blackbird Sings, the new anthology of 'small stones'.

1 November is Mindful Writing Day

Samhain: different dimensions touch in passing. I wish I knew more about this and other ancient festivals. Perhaps if I stop and pay attention I'll find I know more than I think - that happens.

Tomorrow, 1 November, is the first Mindful Writing Day, organised by Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson of Writing our Way Home. They're inviting participants to pay attention for a few moments during the day and write down something of what we experience: a 'small stone'. It's lovely to see that more than one thousand people have signed up. You might think, if you don't write much, that this is not for you, but you might be surprised, because when you stop and pay attention you find things you didn't know were there. Or you might think, if you a prolific writer, that this is small stuff and not for you, and you might be surprised too.

Mindful Writing Day celebrates the publication of A Blackbird Sings, the second anthology of 'small stones'. I'm so glad to be part of this movement and to have contributed to both this new book and the first anthology, pay attention: a river of stones.

There's much light and lightness in this new, small book and the project behind it. Like the title, it sings out - a long peel of 'small stones', each a brief meeting with a different voice and perception. Much lightness, but I also want to try and say something 'heavier'.

I think 'small stones' are big stuff because they are a form of mindfulness practice. As health service professionals are increasingly starting to admit (amazingly, really amazingly!), to cultivate a practice of being present, being mindful, paying attention, is a big, big deal in our societies of screaming distraction and endlessly fragmented attention. Here's a moving article that bears vivid testament to this (via online friend and fellow mindfulness practitioner Jackie Bradley). Writing 'small stones' is a mindfulness practice that works well for me - and for very many others, to judge from the numbers signing up for Mindful Writing Day. These are the things that keep me somewhat sane and hopeful. They cut through less helpful habits and propagate a kinder and more lively relationship both with the world out there and with my own consciousness.

The first anthology included prose reflections on the process from the editors and from a few contributors, and a guide to writing your own 'small stones'. A Blackbird Sings also tops and tails the rich selection of 'stones' with personal notes from the editors and this time takes the process and the movement further, with Kaspa's inspirational and structured short programme for writing 'small stones' over seven days. 

It's a lovely book. You can download the Kindle version FREE until tomorrow here (UK) or here (US). And buy the paperback, a beautiful small object, here (UK) or here (US). and please join us tomorrow for Mindful Writing Day.

Drawing on light

Earlier this year, Lucy's posts and many lovely photographs of her visit to Kettle's Yard in Cambridge reminded me that I hadn't been there for many years - not since I've had enough aesthetic taste or mindful attention to appreciate it, really. Yesterday was softly lit, dipping to lowering skies and heavy rain, then bursting into shafts of brilliant sunshine. It was a good day for lingering in this space designed to draw so much on the changing quality of natural light.



Puddling

Lost treasure

I find myself telling her about the sense of loss, the divorce from fiction, imagination, desires and dreams. These were the things, the life, I couldn't have, but I kept the precious notions of them in a treasure box that I could open and look into whenever I wanted. Lately, the box is empty, and I don't know if these shadowy, imaginary things have faded away or if they're all floating out here now, mixed up with reality, trying to coalesce into something new.

The smell of each day

The muted light of damp October days, the pulpy swirl of leaves underfoot, and the bitter-sweet smell of it all. The smell. I used to briefly smell the weather, the day's mood, on the way to the bus-stop each morning. This is the smell of life, I used to think, and these few rushed minutes every day are not enough of it. So, every time things feel hard, I go outside and fill my lungs with this, remind myself that, however many demons have followed me here from the former life: yes - I can now do this.