On Influences I

I’m spending a lot of my time these days in a 17th century English literature class which means two things; one, I spend more time that I would like to thinking about King Charles I, and two, that I get to read a lot of John Donne. Now John Donne is a guy who thought about and wrote about a lot of pretty cool things many of which have trickled down to us today as aphorisms. In fact Donne was the guy who coined the phrase “no man is an island “ in his, to bring some Bill and Ted into it, most excellent Meditation VXII. To me, this phrase always serves as a reminder that whatever I think and whatever I make is shaped by the world around me and the things I’m interested in. My studio instructors are always encouraging us to seek influences, and when we find them, to put them up on our studio walls to help keep us motivated and involved in the world around us. This week, since I spend so much time there, I thought I would share some of the things on my studio walls.

The photograph to the right is the studio space I inhabit and as you can see I keep it quite cluttered and busy. I have some of the stuff I’m working on, the four guys in the back, as well as some studies off to the right. There are also various bits and bobs of paper off to the right along the wall that serves as my inspirational section.

One of the most important of these, handily obscured by my easel, is the famous Pale Blue Dot picture. The Pale Blue Dot picture was taken in 1990 by the voyager I spacecraft as it was preparing to leave the solar system. The picture was taken at the request of Carl Sagan who I believe I have cited gratuitously as a huge influence in my thinking about science and space. The picture, taken from a distance of some 6 billion kilometres is the most distant ever taken of Earth and reduces our familiar blue home to a mere dot less than the size of a pixel. It’s that little blue speck halfway down the right-most sunbeam. On the wall beside the picture I have the few paragraphs that Sagan wrote about this picture in which he comments on the fact that all of humanity and everything we have ever done resides on that dot.

I also read a lot of poetry. I think poetry and painting have a lot in common. Like a poem a painting is what it is; its form is its content and its content is its form. Right now there are two poems I have up in my space which I will reproduce below. Don’t worry they’re short. The first is The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams. This poem is a good example of imagist poetry which sought to create concrete, vivid images using words. You may of course insert a better, more “Englishy” sounding definition of “imagist poetry” here, should you care to. As an aside I would like to mention, and I am inordinately proud of this I am aware, that I once wrote ten pages on these eight lines. I love this damn poem.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The other poem I have up is a recent addition to my favourites list and its one that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The Loch Ness Monster’s Song by Edwin Morgan has a lot to say about meaning and how we construct meaning which is something that much of my recent artistic work has been about. I wanted to write a paper on this poem, but I wound up writing one about a (insert string of expletives here) snail poem instead. There is a recording of Morgan reading the poem here in case you have trouble figuring out how to pronounce “Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl”. I know I do.

The Loch Ness Monster’s Song

Sssnnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl –
gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm.
Hovoplodok – doplodovok – plovodokot-doplodokosh?
Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok!
Zgra kra gka fok!
Grof grawff gahf?
Gombl mbl bl –
blm plm,
blm plm,
blm plm,
blp.

Finally there is a small picture of a painting by the Canadian Painter Jeffery Burns. Burns is actually a former student of the UofW fine arts program and I met him back in 2005 when he was in town for a show of his work at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery. He gave a talk at the school and even took some time to come and give us advice on our work. When I went to his show I must have spent four or five hours looking at these paintings. There must have been only about 10 or 12 of them, and they filled only one room, but I was entranced.

I hope to do another post next time (or maybe the time after) about some of the other artists I have been looking at as I develop my own artistic practice and how looking at the work of other artists improves my own. I might also just talk about a trip I recently took to Buffalo and a house I saw there. We’ll see. Until then, take care, don’t eat too much candy and have a great weekend.

D.