notes from the drifting spaces
Blair’s art notes…
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Sketchbook wordograph experiments
Here are some excerpts of word art drawings and notation, plus ink studies, reflections on last year’s trips to the Outer Hebrides… splintered half-covered green-grass wild-flowers sheep-shit tide-in tide-out rustless pink-steel-alloy sloping-hillside visitors at a distance cloudy morning passing boats skull shaped sculpture spacecraft zigzag trickle of fresh black water on grey brown
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Recent work and studies
Recent studies using mixed media on card, paper and sketchbooks have been leading to much more free and abstracted pieces that is the way I’m trying to push forward into more poetic, less pictorially restricted territory… ‘Flowing Through Space’ (top-left) was a bit of a breakthrough. Many of these pieces are moving fluidly through city
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A fresh perspective on the north room studio door
A very talented and enthusiastic student of mine blogged her visit to my studio with the photo and creative writing below, which I really like, and kindly allowed me to re-post here. It is great to be able to see the studio through fresh eyes… “Monday 23 January 2012: What’s through the door this week?
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New Year Zen Retreat
Over the new year weekend I went to the inaugural Glasgow Zen Group retreat, or sesshin, at Kagyu Samye Dzong in Glasgow’s west end. Every morning up at half past five to start the day with one and a half hours zazen meditation before breakfast during the holiday may not be many people’s idea of
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Wakabayashi’s Zen Calligraphy
This is my sensei Wakabayashi’s Sho calligraphy of zen master Dogen’s poem coming to terms with reality ’empty-handed’ after returning from China – ‘The eyes are horizontal, and the nose is vertical.’ This prompted my partner to tell me the story she read of Ikkyu (Rinzai zen master, 1394-1481) who placed a curving, twisted bonsai
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Wandering the cityscape spaces
I always find interest in the variety of cityscape spaces, especially at twilight or night when it is easier not to discriminate between shapes. Atmosphere! Winter in Glasgow is not so bad after all. The moon shot I snapped reminds me of Dogen, who often used it as a metaphor for our experience and glimpses
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Drifting Snows, Folded Forms
End of December 3 day trip to the Trossachs National Park Central Scotland 8 and a half hours walk, crampons on at around 400m Exhilarating but tough crunching through snow and ice Carrying materials, limited time for sculpture Drifting snow along the ridge from Ben Ledi to Ben Vane Snowmelt, deer and headtorches for walk back
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Studio work and prep
Have been drawing from various sculpture and my other objects in the studio, this was a quick continuous line drawing from a clay piece. The image on the right is of preparation for new work, this kind of prep is an enjoyable art in itself!
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December 2011
Studio work in progress… From the Hill Top Some one from below Is looking at the whirling Of the cherry snow. Hakugetsu Recently I have been reading and considering the 7th Century Hua-yen Chinese philosophy that influenced Zen in terms of that concept of interconnectedness and impermanence and I’m pulling this into my worldview behind