Thursday, November 22, 2007

More Michael Maier Atalanta Fugiens






Here are some more emblems from Michael Maiers Atalanta Fugiens presented with my apologies for the random order in which they are appearing here. The first picture is the title page which has the story of Atalanta and the Golden Apples around the border. The book The Zelator by Mark Hedsel and edited by David Ovason has some interesting information about this picture and is recommended reading as far as I am concerned.
The second is Emblem 38, Rebis is a hermaphrodite produced from the mountains of Mercury and Venus.
The third is Emblem 34, He is conceived in Baths, born in the air, and being made Red he walks upon the waters.
The fourth is Emblem 8, Take an Egg and smite it with a fiery sword.
The fifth is Emblem 28, The King is sitting in a vaporous Bath and is freed from the Black Gall by the Physitian Pharut.
As before I would like to acknowledge Adam McCleans Alchemy website which I have linked to here http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atalanta.html I will be putting up more of these Emblems when I can find nice big copies.


Sunday, November 18, 2007

Stormy






Nice heavy seas and a good sky today so lots of photographs of big waves. Good stormy night with everything rattling and banging in the wind, much more fun than all the calm weather that we've had recently. Hopefully all these waves will bring driftwood up onto the beach too.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Sunday, November 04, 2007

More Paintings




The square blue painting at the top was painted in Woodbury in the early nineties, the driftwood for the frame for this painting was collected on the beach at Weston. Like a lot of these paintings of the time this was painted mostly at night which was not a good idea as in the morning the colours would look different, consequently I invested in a daylight bulb for my little studio.
The second painting was from the same time and involved some collage with newspaper. I have always enjoyed sticking things onto paintings and generally do not respect the conventions of the painting being a window and try to distract and play with these conventions. Quite often I have left the background wood showing through and sometimes I have stuck cigarette butts onto the painting. I have given up smoking now and my paintings smell a lot nicer for it.
The third orange and red painting was completed last year and the whole thing is mounted on a very thick piece of wood that was washed up onto the beach possibly making it the heaviest painting I have made so far. I would hate to think how much this would cost to send through the post and I would certainly not want this to fall off the wall onto me.
The last painting was made in about 1995 and was made by painting lots of small offcuts of wood with leftover paint and then arranging and glueing them onto a wooden board. Arranging these pieces of wood took a long time as I work very slowly and like to look at things for a long time as you cannot rush these things. Hopefully some of this time and deliberation is visible in the results.

November