Skip to main content

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."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...
17 comments
Read more