18 Sept 2024

Jim
Lloyd

Full
Moon

Oct 2nd

Sep 3rd

Rock Forms

After Rock Forms (1952)

by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

‘The laws of nature are but the

mathematical thoughts of God.’

Euclid

(attrib.)

A point is that which has no part.

Water dripping into a dark cove.

A line is breadthless length.

The rush of saltwater up a narrow zawn.

The ends of a line are points.

Sea pinks, cliff-top vertigo.

A wave about to break.

A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.

The rocks are just rocks.

A surface is that which has length and breadth only.

Oil paint fumes in the studio.

The edges of a surface are lines.

The veins on your hand gripping the paint-tubes:

red lake, viridian, burnt umber, and cerulean blue.

A figure is that which is contained by any boundary.

In the storage depot, temperature stable.

A boundary is that which is an extremity of anything.

Tacks holding your canvases taut, silent, in the white gallery.

Behind the poem...

My poem responds to Wilhemena Barnes-Graham’s painting Rock Forms as part of Paths to Abstraction – a 2023 review of her art by Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Barnes-Graham was fascinated by forms found in nature: her paintings progressing from realistic depictions to abstractions inspired by naturally occurring shapes. In my response to this painting, I reflect on the tension between our real and messy world and the pure abstract world of forms. I mix lines from Elements (Euclid’s treatise on geometry) with my thoughts on the painting and experience of the place depicted.