Traherne paintings
About the paintings
The purpose of poetic painting is to arouse poetic emotion in those who behold it, by means of symbols.’ So wrote Cecil Collins (1908-1989) in his Hymn to Life. His work drew attention to the inner world, the world of the imagination. Perhaps it is this approach that can best express
Traherne’s thought. He believed that God’s greatest gift to us is love, the fountain which nourishes happiness, and he saw what the world was doing to love. When I came to think about this and how it could be expressed in painting, the challenge was a daunting one, how do you paint love?
The result has been a series of suggestions, leading to what I hope is not so much a definitive illustration, but more a contribution to what must always be an ongoing debate.
It takes the form of a series of glimpses, perhaps an occasional partly obscured memory of something which is always present but difficult to realize. It is like that feeling of knowing but not knowing so often evoked in a piece of music, or in a very young child’s questioning stare, or in a tree at dusk. It is the experience of seeing out of the corner of your eye when you are occupied with something else, a fleeting and elusive knowledge.
These ideas come from a land that seems far away, this idea of deeply buried memory is one which I have tried to express. It is rather like an excavation. One has to dig deep, and get very muddy, throw out barrow loads of soil. In the process it is very easy to get lost, but amongst the earth and dross there may suddenly appear an image, or series of images, and like old friends they talk to you. The more you listen the more they tell you. Gradually a landscape of images emerges, they are often rather fragmented, even disjointed, but that is how memory works. Sometimes some restoration work is needed to indicate the great age and authenticity of these images.
Eleanor Allitt 21 May 2009
The purpose of poetic painting is to arouse poetic emotion in those who behold it, by means of symbols.’ So wrote Cecil Collins (1908-1989) in his Hymn to Life. His work drew attention to the inner world, the world of the imagination. Perhaps it is this approach that can best express
Traherne’s thought. He believed that God’s greatest gift to us is love, the fountain which nourishes happiness, and he saw what the world was doing to love. When I came to think about this and how it could be expressed in painting, the challenge was a daunting one, how do you paint love?
The result has been a series of suggestions, leading to what I hope is not so much a definitive illustration, but more a contribution to what must always be an ongoing debate.
It takes the form of a series of glimpses, perhaps an occasional partly obscured memory of something which is always present but difficult to realize. It is like that feeling of knowing but not knowing so often evoked in a piece of music, or in a very young child’s questioning stare, or in a tree at dusk. It is the experience of seeing out of the corner of your eye when you are occupied with something else, a fleeting and elusive knowledge.
These ideas come from a land that seems far away, this idea of deeply buried memory is one which I have tried to express. It is rather like an excavation. One has to dig deep, and get very muddy, throw out barrow loads of soil. In the process it is very easy to get lost, but amongst the earth and dross there may suddenly appear an image, or series of images, and like old friends they talk to you. The more you listen the more they tell you. Gradually a landscape of images emerges, they are often rather fragmented, even disjointed, but that is how memory works. Sometimes some restoration work is needed to indicate the great age and authenticity of these images.
Eleanor Allitt 21 May 2009