FEATURE - The Making of a 'Reliquary'

A few years ago Hubby and I were walking the Pilgrim Way back from our first visit to the The Slipper Chapel in Walsingham. At the side of the road we passed a discarded wheel hub. Having walked on I was suddenly struck by an idea for it, so popped back to pick it up. Having seen a few reliquaries of saints and the great catholic good in the Slipper Chapel, I thought I'd make one.

Once home, I primed and painted it a dark red base colour. I ordered ten miniature glass vials from E bay, Thinking they might make suitable receptacles for 'reliquary' objects, whatever they turned out to be. I created a long collage artwork out of painted wood off-cuts to form a suitable background support. Everything then hung about in my workshop draped in plastic, as other events interrupted the creative flow and I lost sight of how I intended to take it forward. So it stayed awaiting the return of time and inspiration, for what turned out to be a number of years.

Fast forward to the most recent lock down. Once we started our regular Art Club day, completing the Reliquary Project resurfaced. I decided what each of the ten vials would contain - things that in some way represented me, my interests and enthusiasms. These turned out to be:~

1) Writing - a poem written by me
2) DNA - beard shavings
3) Gay/Camp -a strip of cut gems in the colour of the gay rainbow flag.
4) Painting - a strip painted in gouache in a geometric design
5) Music - a playlist for my funeral *** (links at bottom of this post )
6) North Norfolk - filled with sand from Sheringham Beach
7) Churches & Architecture - a painting of a pointed arch window
8) Buddhism - a stick of incense
9) Dogen - a written extract from the Genjo Koan
10) Craft Making - a cabled string of yarn

I was surprised how quickly everything came together in the end. It was as if all that time elapsing had narrowed down all the options about how best to complete it. So now its mounted on its background and forms part of my shrine in the craft room / shrine space / spare room.

Reliquary Playlist *** ( with You Tube Links )

1) T Rex - 20th Century Boy 2) Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime 3) David Bowie - Aladdin Sane 4) A Certain Ratio - Flight 5) Elbow - One Day Like This 6) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life 7) Sparks - The Decline & Fall of Me 8) Cocteau Twins - Musette & Drums 9) Wild Beasts - End Come Too Soon 10) Strauss - "Beim Schlafengehen" Four Last Songs ( Jesse Norman )

ARTWORK ARCHIVE 2019 ~ Recent Work

It started out with just messing around with some old bits of distressed painted palletwood, but ended up with an interesting mixed media collage of wood with worked tin and air dried ceramic elements thrown in for good measure. This could well be the start of something.

PROJECTS 2014 ~ Opening Possibilities

Continuing with my 'field' experiments using the alarm sign as source material. Beginning to get intimations of needing to move on to other source materials, or at least have a break from this one for a while. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying the sort of loosening up process that's happening, wherebye other possibilities start to present themselves.

In the Form of a Collision

The Ever Present Ghost

ARTWORK ARCHIVE ~ Mathematical Sign Series

Whilst still in the early exploratory stages of finding out what sort of artwork I wanted to do, I started using signs and symbols as the creative beginnings of them. I found then, and still do now, that I need something to kick start and get the creative juices flowing. My training in Graphic Design played its part too, leaving me a fondness for gouache as a medium and for the forms of international signage. These signs of necessity are simple and communicate universally.  They also, perhaps unconsciously, draw on fundamental forms which  often have archetypal resonances.  These resonances and meanings are sometimes buried within them. Mathematical symbols are a case in point. Extraordinarily simple marks, ones easily scratched into stone, clay or wood, these signs for add, subtract, divide and multiply are some of our most ancient human signs. Imbued with a rich mixture of meanings with practical, religious and magical significance

The four paintings as shown below were created over a period of twelve years. As a consequence they also chart developments in my artistic process, changes in the style of my work and a growing confidence with what I want to do with it.

AFFIRMATION
Completed in 1994, it's one of the earliest of my completed pieces. I'd only begun painting my own artwork a year or so before. Even at this stage, themes that reoccur in subsequent work were already making themselves present. A fondness for squares and circles, and work seeping over onto the frame, both make there first appearance in 'Affirmation'.  My sources for design elements were often adaptions from Medieval pattern books or fabric and lace designs. The works title is incorporated into the piece as part of a broad border within it.

This was the first time I'd attempted overlaying gouache colours, and learnt to my cost that I needed to be more aware of whether the colours I was using were staining or fugitive ones. When It came to the final layer of the spiky white circle, the magenta gouache kept seeping through. These sort of technical difficulties arose out of  inexperience and a process of creation where I never quite knew for certain where a piece might finally end up. In this case I learnt that PVA or white acrylic could 'seal off' the surface so staining colours wouldn't come through and I could then paint white gouache on top of them. The overriding feeling i was after was to create a visual sense of the plus/add sign's intrinsically positive nature

Affirmation by Vidyavajra

APPORTION
Though painted the following year in 1995, I was still following pretty much the same creative process and resources as before. The title 'Apportion' is woven into a border design, the cursive lettering I chose has its mirror reflection placed opposite it. The resulting border is reminiscent of Art Deco though that was entirely arrived at by chance, it wasn't a consciously created effect at all. Both the background pattern and that used in the central 'Division' sign are adaptions from a book of Medieval Tile Designs, where i devised my own colourways. Across this I've spread symmetrically an array of bright Ultramarine Blue squares that sing out against the more earthy browns, greens, and bronze of the background tones.

With this piece I was trying to give visual form to dividing as an apportioning, with the attendant qualities of equality and fairness that these concepts imply. I didn't want to risk painting the white flowers over the top of the background colours. So, I played it safe and painted them on watercolour paper separately and stuck them on top afterwards. Though each is a part of a series, I didn't want to frame them the same. Given the time span over which they were painted it wouldn't have been possible anyway So each piece was framed as seemed individually appropriate.

Apportion by Vidyavajra

ABSTRACTION
Again painted a year later in 1996, things have this time moved on both in terms of my creative process and confidence. I've stopped using design sources and the more traditional patterning of the first two pieces. Though you can't read any lettering saying 'abstraction' it is there, but abstracted so it can't be read. I drew out on tracing paper the letters for Abstraction, then divided them into 1 inch squares, which I then cut out and reassembled randomly to create the basic structure for the piece. This method of messing around with an element, be it lettering or symbol, to create the finished design, has became an ever increasing feature in future work.

The essential visual theme for this piece is to be drawn in, sucked in by it towards the central Subtraction sign. The subtraction sign itself needed a focal point to complete this effect, hence the small circle of gold paint in the centre. The ever decreasing radials then dominate your focus as a result. Because of the changes in my method of creating it and drawing it out onto watercolour paper, this piece departed from my 'evolutionary' approach in the creation of a piece. It required a more deliberate and thought through process. Whilst this had its benefits in avoiding those unexpected problems I'd had before, it meant my process of creation become more strongly directed and controlled. This created for me an air of frustration with the detail  and sheer slog this process involved, that I've only recently overcome. I revamped the frame of this piece for my exhibition last year. The original white frame with gold turning lines running across it and the glass, I was never that happy with as the effect I was after never really worked.

Abstraction by Vidyavajra

AMPLIFICATION
Whilst the first three were painted in three subsequent years, 'Amplification' wasn't finished till 2006.  The reasons for the gap is complex, but getting more involved in Buddhism and being Ordained in 2000, were significant factors in reducing my productivity. My creative focus went elsewhere for a while. However, by 2004-5 a number of changes had occurred which meant I began reconnecting with my artwork and this unfinished series. One of the things that had stalled 'Amplification' was uncertainty about what exactly to do.
Sometimes just being caught in a series of pieces can so stifle the creative process you have to go off and do something else.

The main visual element in this piece is the multiplication sign X itself. It exists in in five different sizes, in the background twice in the foreground circle  an even larger one is suggested on the frame which itself is made up of small X shaped tile dividers.  One element that interestingly connects this final piece with the first, is the use of a lace pattern in the white circular design. The frame was the last element to be created for last years exhibition. The central picture had been lying around in a folder for seven years unframed. Again this was due to uncertainty about what to do.with it. In some senses this painting marked the highpoint of my 'controlled' method of working. The experience of painting hundreds of tiny X's for the background had driven me potty taking weeks and weeks of work. After that I wanted to start gently making subtle deviations and experiments with this style. To break out of the prison I'd created around my work, to transgress a few of my own rules and established methods of working.

Amplification by Vidyavajra

PROJECTS 2014 ~ Breaking The Pattern

I've been viaually exploring two things lately, one having evolved out of the other. My previous work has often taken a centralised form which visually recedes away from the viewer. What I've begun doing lately is to create a level 'pattern field' which suggests layers and depth within it, though still taking a sign/symbol as its creative source and starting point.  From doing these 'pattern fields' has evolved an interest in visually messing up the regularity of a pattern. Introducing random breaks into it by changes in colour density and tone, playing off line work against flat colour, and generally misleading visual expectations.

I've begun each piece by handwriting in a criss crossing grid, the whole of the Fire Sutta., underlying whatever happens in the subsequent layers over it. Sometimes its still visible, sometimes barely noticible it receeds into the general patterning. It seems appropriate that the Dharma should be underneath everything, even if its not seen. My working process has subtly altered over time, so that I now let each piece evolve at its own pace. Allowing whatever is to come next to emerge out of the completed previous stage.

This meansI have to make a practice of staying with the stage I'm currently involved with until its finished, and not thinking much at all about whatever comes next. This allows each piece to develop its own direction, and not become too fixed or predetermined by me. I'm finding this an more enjoyable way of working, largely because it circumvents my tendency to become tense and over anxious about where a piece is going. This way, not knowing is actually the name of the game.

For my birthday I was given an airbrush, its a pretty basic point and spray, which is at present all I need. 'Broken Machinery' 'Irregular Transmission' and 'Passing Through Phases' are my first pieces using it.

Anyway, here are a few of the more recent pieces.

Broadcast

Broken Machinery

Irregular Transmission

Passing through Phases

Soundings Are Taken

PROJECTS 2014 ~ Larger Pieces

Developing on from those smaller random colour selection studies, I created these two larger pieces on my Art Retreat, which I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

A Bright Response

Going At Tangents

PROJECTS 2014 ~ Random Colour Selection Experiments

I've been experimenting with selecting colours randomly. Usually its six colours which I then have to work with, and see what I can make of them. It is certainly stretching me. Any artist will have their favourite colour combinations, or predictable choices for contrasting or complimenting. I've discovered there are often hidden colour taboos, like not to use black, or earth colours with other brighter colours. One selection produced colours which were tonally very similar, so this encouraged me to use white and black to create more dynamism in their relationships. In future I think I may try reducing the number of colours and see what happens.

Quite apart from this freeing up of colours, I also cast dice to decide what colours go where. Generally I do these sort of experiments because it introduces an element of spontanaity into my working process, and loosens the degree of control I have over the final appearence of a piece, and as you may have noticed my work is technically quite controlled enough. 

Fractured Rays 2

2014 PROJECTS ~ Experimentation

Much of the artwork I've been doing lately have been experiments with colour and depth. It's been interesting watching the fluctuations in my responses as these have progressed. An experminental appraoch has to be interested in what's happening here and now in the present moment. I've found much of my practice has been taken up with bringng myself back to that moment, after my mind has ridden off on an attractive aesthetic associative ramble.  There are sometimes conflicted feelings aroundt where an experiment is going, which is an indication that my ego has in some way taken over the driving seat. The conflict being between what's actually occuring on paper and what my ego wants this, as yet, unfinished piece to become. Usually a variant on it being the most astonishing piece of artwork ~ ever.  I then have to unshackle my mojo from this, put my ego aside like a demanding child, and return to the task right infront of me. and do just that.

I've been following up threads of inspiration and interest regardleess of whether these experiments are a success or a failure. or produce finished saleable work or not. Yet there is part of me that still wants the mixed sense of accomplishment and relief, the 'hit' that a successfully completed piece can bring . Anyway, here are a few photos of some recent experiments.

Shattering Reversal 2

Shattering Reversal 3

Fractured Rays 1

2014 PROJECTS ~ First New Work

Once the commission was done and dusted, I could start developing some new ideas from my sketch book. Here are the first paintings to come out of that.

Shattering Reversal 1

Transparent Alertness

2014 PROJECTS ~ Completed Commission

Inbetween al the other creative things I get drawn into doing for trhe Sangha, I've been working on this private commision for Lester Robinson since the exhibtion in October. I finally finished it and gave it to him yesterdays. My first satisfied patron. here's a photo of the completed thing.

PROJECT ~ Windhorse Shrine Room Backdrop

After several months of banging, punching and assembling, the Backdrop I was making for the Windhorse Shrine Room was finished. Then it hung in the Abbey House Shrine room for a month, awaiting the begining of the Practice Period leading up to this years Enlightenment Celebration at Windhorse. This last Thursday came the day to move it, a procedure I was unduely anxious about.Bar a few minor bits pinging off which were easily repaired, the move and the installation went fine.

It really does look magnificent now its in its true home. The metal also complements and enhances the standing rupa. Unlike my previous work it came out pretty much as I originally envisaged it, with very little adjustments required to the vision. There were technical issues to overcome, but then there always are, and I was also learning what I wanted to do with working in tin. Something tells me this won be the last piece I'll be doing in recycled tin.