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Spirit of Place: Lorna Graves

A further reminder from LiveJournal of what I posted a while back - an appreciation of the artist, Lorna Graves. I remember that first meeting vividly. We were in the White Hart Bar at the conference day's end; and, somehow the poet, David Gascoyne, Lorna, and myself created an ''introverts'' corner (maximum three). We primarily listened to David talk of poetry, existentialism, and his current reading of the Russian religious philosopher, Lev Shestov, making pertinent comments, asking gentle questions, and enjoying each other's presence. Lorna died too young in 2006: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/lorna-graves-413087.html

"I met Lorna at Dartington Hall at the first Temenos Conference on 'art and the renewal of the sacred'. It was an appropriate location: Dartington had acted as shelter and support for her artistic mentor: Cecil Collins and it was his work that had furnished the cover image for the journal Temenos' first edition. The conference too exhibited the openness to diverse forms of sacred expression that Lorna embodied in her art.

She had an outward vulnerability that disguised an inward resilience: an unsettled childhood had possibly brought her to training in art relatively late, not starting upon it until in her late twenties; and, like many 'late starters' robbed of a certain early over-assurance that carries you through your many and inevitable mistakes and wrong turnings.

Her art sought an anchoring in place - both of landscape and myth - whilst always recognizing that the more deeply you are present to a place the more opportunity exists for 'openings' to transcendence.

This was most perfectly expressed in her last landscapes - utterly Cumbria yet only intimated by color and line, a Cumbria translucent to that other world that is enfolded in and enfolds this one. Cumbria doused in heaven's light. It was a direction in her art sadly truncated by her last illness and early death.

I especially liked her fired, Japanese raku style animals, recognizably themselves yet graced with otherness, like here a bull I imagine, resonant and strong of line, for horns balancing a crescent moon: a beautiful blending of masculine and feminine.


Likewise in this painting, the heaviness of stone gives way, yields in starlight, worlds blend into a single, dynamic whole to which all is oned.


I have one of her angels - yellow light emergent from a green background: an ecological angel perhaps, the spirit of a place."


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