_WHITE.png)
18 Sept 2024
Jim
Lloyd
Full
Moon
.png){kind=small}
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.
