Sunbird

....continuing the theme of the Phoenix....

Firebird takes wing.

A fleeting image appearing during contemplation of Fire in the Six Element practice. The drawing is a very quick and tiny sketch.  It is a much smaller picture than you are seeing on your screen.  I made it sitting in a tent in a Norfolk garden on Saturday.

Aviary of WIld Flying Thoughts

Today, reading Hillman, I came across an image he's taken from Plato of the rich and crazy mind as a wonderful aviary of wild flying thoughts.  Here are two pictures of wild flying thoughts.  Each image tells a story and is evocative of its own truths.

White bird on Dark Background

Birds soaring upwards

Sailing the WInd 2

Here is another picture. There is a bird sailing the wind but the picture is not really meant to be a figurative painting.  It is an image of air and space and light. The background landscape holds ambiguities of water, mountains, islands, forest or other possibilities to engage the viewers imagination. The bird's destination is a mystery.

Sailing the WInd

Today I made a picture of a bird sailing the wind. 
Watching the seagulls, I was reminded of the work of Peter Lanyon and Georges Braque.
Have you ever watched a gull ride the thermals?  Here is Peter Lanyon's painting of a thermal http://bit.ly/r8q30H so evocative of Cornwall's coast with its currents and sea mists, so expressive of Lanyon's strong feeling for the elements. I imagine it as a record of his experience of gliding on the winds. I shall never forget how he was to die tragically in a gliding accident four years after he completed this picture.
A bird flies through Braque's studio http://bit.ly/qHlkar. It comes from a series of late paintings which are amongst my all time favourites for their spatial sophistication and complexity. 
On the ceilings of the Louvre Braque's birds fly. They are framed by a 16th century richly carved ceiling.  There is an apparent simplicity to the design. I admire his masterful handling of space and form. Here is a sketch he made for this http://bit.ly/nL7Ffz and here the context which frames them.http://bit.ly/paB1FP

Amitabha (from my sketchbook)

Cornish Unicorn

 

I'm re posting an old favourite for the collaborative artists project Buried Treasure that invites art bloggers to go into the depths of their blogs and dig for buried treasure and repost an old favourite. This picture emerged during time spent in a solitary caravan in Cornwall in April 2008, a place full of myth and magic where one might imagine Merlin appearing from the mists.

Strawberry Landscape

Nothing beats the taste of summer strawberries.  I bought a punnet of freshly picked fruit at the Devon roadside. This image evokes for me the tangy flavour. A drawing of a strawberry and leaf prints become forms in the landscape.

Collage in gold and yellow

Trawling through old sketchbooks I found a gold and yellow collage I assembled in an Anglesey caravan at the sea's edge on the Full Moon Day in 1993.  Years later, another May Full Moon brings celebrations of Buddha's Enlightenment!

Blue Angel

 

Whence did she come?

Whither she flies?

Second Dead Sea Sketch

 

A hazy day, the beach hard and salty, dust in the air.

Dead Sea Sketch

 

Beneath an Umbrella at the lowest place on Earth