back to life drawing…

I went to life-drawing on the 5th March 2024.

On the 18th March 2024 I was rushed to the emergencies in the back of an ambulance.

Then it all went blank...

No energy.
No desire.

I am alive.

…

30 weeks later.

Back to life-drawing.

The 30th September 2024, I opened a box containing red pastel dust over my jeans and sweatshirt.

The red streak down my leg immediately moved me to take a photo. 

The poses, short or long merged together on the pages. There seemed little care for separation. There seemed little respect for anatomy. What counted, it appeared, was the energy, the freedom, the lack…of judgement.


I stopped, energy momentarily exhausted. 

I wasn’t sure what had happened. 
I wasn’t sure that I recognised myself. 

I wasn’t sure if I had changed. 

Is this how I had been?

Is this how it had been? 

Is this how I am? 
Is this how I will be? 
Is this how it will be? 

I don’t know. 

I don’t think it matters. 

This is life drawing…

des histoires de cailloux.

Les plages de Flamborough

Je ne me souvenais plus que j’étais déjà venu à Flamborough dans le Yorkshire il y a quelques années. A l’époque, j’étais plus attiré par scruter ses falaises pour des voies d’escalade potentielles. En voyant l’instabilité de la craie, il avait été évident que ce ne serait jamais un site de grimpe.

En été 2022, je suis revenu à Flamborough en famille et nous sommes descendus sur les plages de North Landing, par une journée ensoleillée, et de Danes’ Dyke par une journée pluvieuse (un temps d’été typique du nord de l’Angleterre). Tout de suite, l’association de ces plages dominées par leurs falaises avec les Vikings excitait mon imagination.

Sur la plage de Danes’ Dyke, je m’arrêtais souvent pour prendre des photos des compositions créées par des cailloux de craie et de silex, des algues, et toute une sélection de détritus rejetés par la mer: des bouts de plastique, de bois, de métal, de faïence, de brique, des chaussures, des jouets…

Je me suis assis sur un rocher pour faire des esquisses.

Les plages de Deal et de Sandwich

Le contraste entre la côte nord-est et la côte sud de l’Angleterre ne pourrait pas être plus saisissant. Quand nous sommes arrivés dans le Kent via l’Ecosse, le soleil baignait les plages de silex presque tous les jours. Ici, la température de l’eau était même agréable pour la baignade!

Le temps passé à m’immerser dans l’ambiance de ces plages m’a laissé des souvenirs sensoriels très riches. Pendant quelques mois j’attendais avec impatience le moment où j’aurais le temps de me concentrer sur la peinture.

Exposition organisée par l’association Pierre le Vénérable.

Début 2023, j’explorais les possibilités d’exposer mon travail dans les environs de Clermont-Ferrand où j’habite. J’ai pu établir assez rapidement un calendrier d’exposition à Clermont-Ferrand, Thiers, Sauxillanges, et Orcines.

Parmi ces opportunités, l’association Pierre le Vénérable m’a proposé de venir exposer à la Maison du Patrimoine à Sauxillanges. En voyant des images du lieu et de ces expositions, j’ai tout de suite été excité par les possibilités.

J’avais demandé à l’organisatrice de l’exposition ce qui lui a plu parmi les oeuvres que j’avais soumises. Elle m’avais tout de suite répondu qu’elle aimait bien les cailloux. Une visite de l’espace m’a encore donné d’autres idées sur le dévéloppement d’une collection qui serait appelée “Caillou”.

J’ai passé quelques mois à tourner le concept “Caillou” dans ma tête et petit à petit, différentes facettes de mes relations avec ce terme ont émergé. Il y avait d’abord les cailloux des plages que j’étais en train de peindre, ensuite les falaises que j’avais grimpées et celles qui n’étaient pas praticables, il y avait l’aspect historique des lieux marqués par des pierres, les cairns, les anciennes villes fortifiées, les chemins coupés dans la roche.

J’ai fait des recherches en demandant aux personnes de partager leurs collections de cailloux et les raisons qui les motivaient de les garder sur un mur en ligne. J’ai ensuite cherché les relations entre des artistes et les cailloux, le travail et les écrits de Barbara Hepworth en particulier, m’ont touché.

Le terme “caillou” m’a ensuite fait penser à l’expression “il n’a rien dans le caillou” et l’expression en anglais “there is more than one pebble on the beach”. Les cailloux peuvent donc faire référence aux humains.

J’avais peint une image d’un caillou que j’avais intitulée “Planet Claire”, cette image m’a mené à une autre image de la Nasa, “The Pale Blue Dot” et un essai écrit par le scientifique Carl Sagan. Dans cet essai, Carl Sagan met la lumière sur l’insignifiance relative de notre planète et ceux et celles qui l’habitent par rapport à l’imensité de l’univers qui nous entoure.

Finalement, je me suis intéressé à la constitution géologique des pierres arkoses qui ont été utilisées pour la construction de l’abaye de Sauxillanges et des rochers d’escalade qui m’ont marqué, littéralement. D’après ce que j’ai pu comprendre (ayant des notions extrêmement vagues de la géologie) la pierre sédimentaire a été constitutée de couches successives, de sable, de terre, de pierre, de coquillage, de bois, de restes de plantes et d’animaux. La couleur rouge qu’on trouve dans certains de ces pierres vient d’une concentration d’oxyde de fer (la rouille).

Très longtemps avant l’activité volcanique en Auvergne, la terre a été couverte par un océan, ce qui expliquerait la présence de ces pierres sédimentaires.

L’exposition à la Maison du Patrimoine mettra en dialogue la collection “caillou” avec les oeuvres de Nadine Vergues, Jean Vincent, Corinne Vignet et l’espace de l’exposition qui est lui même fait de strates des histoires successives. J’attends avec impatience la possibilité de voir ce qui va émerger de cette mise en dialogues d’artistes, de lieux et de nos oeuvres.

Entre temps, je remercie l’association Pierre le Vénérable pour leur enthousiasme, et leurs initiatives culturelles qui donnent une nouvelle vie à ces vielles pierres.

in significance.

“Outcrop.” 2021

I have lost all sense of perspective.

I am hanging on here by the grace of...?

My skin is all that counts.

I am in significance.

A fearful drop is shrouded in swirling cloud.

I am thankful for this.

My attention is focussed on this micro-universe of slanting holds, loose bulging rock, dank cracks.

I am hyperaware of my fraility, of my insecurity.

My breathing is drowned out by deadening roar.

What monsters hide in those mountain gulleys?

Time seems to have stopped.

Heroic odyssey.

The line dangling down, is my only connection to my climbing companion.

The distance between us and the noise of the mountain-side, has cut off any reassuring communication.

I try calling out.

I hear my cries swallowed up in the mist.

"Hello! Can you hear me?"

Silence.

I am effectively alone.

For what seems like hours, I dust grit off potential points of purchase with my finger tips..

I am stretching out blindly above my head, while adjusting balance on my toes.

I feel the gravity of my position, my body-weight pulling me downwards.

"Idiot!"

"Fucking idiot."

There is nobody here to hear my cursing.

I am my own best and my own worst company.

"Idiot!"

"Fucking idiot."

There is noone here to hear my cursing.

Time seems to be on pause.

"So, what next?"

I overhear myself discussing aloud my plans of action.

"If I were to put my hand there?"

"No, it's unsafe, there's a loose block."

"If that were to come off, that's a bloody big block."

"What if I moved my foot up a bit."

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Silence!

I abandon myself to instinct.

I have somehow moved to a higher position.

"Yes, that seems better."

I am clinging onto what appears to be a solid hold.

I have a future now.

This is some sort of minor triumph.

I am alive.

My story continues...

Fast-forward...

I am sitting here on a sofa, with a lap-top, a few tabs open on the browser, feeling around for the next move.

It comes from a friend of mine, from back then, at university.

Johnny Dawes was the greatest, bravest, rock-climber of his generation, likely unknown to anyone outside this marginal fraternity.

His first ascent of what he named "The Indian Face", up on Clogwyn Du'r Arddu in North Wales, was, at the time, the hardest, certainly the riskiest route ever attempted.

I was, and now I am again, struck by the intensity of his description of this climb which concentrates on just a few metres of blank rock.

It owes its existence to his improbable, youthful, sense of survival.

"I went for the crux, the motion startling me like a car unexpectedly in gear in a crowded parking lot. I swarm through the roundness of the bulge to a crank on a brittle spike for a cluster of three crystals on the right; each finger crucial and separate like the keys for a piano chord. I change feet three times to rest my lower legs, each time having to jump my foot out to put the other in. The finger-holds are too poor to hang on should the toes catch on each other. All those foot-changing mistakes on easy moves by runners come to mind. There is no resting. I must go and climb for the top. I swarm up towards the sunlight, gasping for air. A brittle hold stays under mistreatment and then I really blow it. Fearful of a smear on now-non-sticky boots I use an edge and move up, a fall fatal, but the automaton stabs back through, wobbling, but giving its all and I grasp a large sidepull and tube upward. The ropes dangle uselessly from my waist. Arthur Birtwhistle on Diagonal, I grasp incuts and the tight movement swerves to a glide as gravity swings skyward."

Johnny Dawes

Fast-forward...

My desire to write this post, the discovery of the title: "in significance" , my recounting of these moments of life captured on pieces of blank rock came to me on reading a post by Keith Hamon entitled Deleuze, Serres, and the Desires of Prepositions.

In the article he charts his emerging exploration of prepositions in blog posts over a period of a year.

He structures his article as a travelog, following the flow of his reflection, as if it is flowing down the Chattooga river.

There is a moment where he talks of river noise:

"there is no position outside the noise, no objective stance away that says the noise is over there apart from me, and I can assess it and judge it from over here apart from over there. If you've ever run a wild river such as the Chattooga, then you understand noise. On the Chattooga, you are always inside the noise, part of the noise. The noise flows through and around you. There is no transcending the noise of the river, nor is the noise transcendent. The noise is always immanent. Actually, transcendent as something beyond and immanent as something inherent mean nothing in the noise. The noise simply is, and you are simply in it, differentiated more or less at different times, but never distanced. Your own noise is included in the noise but not inclusive of it."

Keith Hamon

It was these lines which brought me back with a jolt to a precarious stance on the South Pillar of the Mont Aiguille which I climbed twenty years ago.

I heard again the noise of the wind blowing through the gulleys, ducked again on hearing the terrifying whoosh of dropping boulders.

I was reminded of Johnny Dawes.

We are as one, humbled, in our insignificant significance.

"You fucking idiot."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."

There we are at a crux again.

"My God, oh my God , why have you forsaken me?"

Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34

Silence.

"I thirst"

John 19:28

[Adapted from In significance, first published in touches of sense… Februrary 1st 2015]

driftwood curiosity.

The window sill was full of junk.

Arranged in some sort of pattern were miscellaneous finds.

The objects were certainly curiosities.

The objects were perhaps memory aids.

The objects were perhaps an artist's exhibition.

There were no legends to explain.

We will have to assemble our own meaning.

The collection certainly attested to a love of nature.

In no apparent order there were:

Collections of shells.

Broken clock mechanisms.

Pebbles from a beach.

An asparagus fern.

A driftwood stallion.

There was nothing of any saleable value.

The objects were beyond value.

Shall we call it a treasure chest of scrap?

Shall we call it an animistic shrine?

Here lies buried, a story-teller's hoard.

For today, I shall keep the plot simple.

I will not weary you with interpretation.

I beg your forgiveness.

I don't suppose you will see interest here.

I don't suppose you will see value here.

How can one be attached to a piece of driftwood?

I am content you see no value.

I see myself standing on a beach.

You have left me quite alone.

Objects are washed up by the ocean.

Something catches my eye.

I bend down to pick it up.

It will spin my yarn a while.

Gulls' cry in the wind.

There is a strong smell of brine.

Waves crash on the shore.

Pebbles drawl.

I am home.

[first published October 26th, 2014, touches of sense…]