cornered

The recent departure of a friend for one of the far off corners of the earth, somewhere in Russia, brought back for me, once again, the very question of corners. Watching the jet take off in its graceful curve from a corner of the Tullamarine airport into the sky, a place without corners, was an experience of great liberation. Imagine, a place without corners..

Cornered

There are many kind of corners, but the one created by two straight lines and a right angle is probably the most familiar. The arrogance in the naming of this angle as ‘right’, acts as a warning. This is the kind of angle, which, in its very being, threatens. Threatens the organic structure of our existence. I have a thing with these right angles and, in terms of our architecture, the corners they create. What do we use these corners for anyway? Have you really ever seen a good use for a corner? Any corner?

I remember, and who doesn’t, as a child having to stand in the corner, whether in school or at home. This act, in itself, shows the waste of space the adult world thinks a corner is. The corners they so diligently designed. “The corner is a waste of space, go stand in it, and be punished”. Interesting thing happened though, especially in the corners of the various class rooms where I’ve spend time. It is there that I started to dream. It is there that my creative journey started. Stuck in a corner. A place of solitude and silence. The solitude of the imagination, born in the silence of a still space. A space not used. A wasted space.

My creative journey started with the question; “How do I get out of here.” This questioning carried on into my teenage years when I felt cornered in a job I hated, but had to take as the result of one of those discriminating I.Q. tests. “How do I get out of here” I did and it was the most creative act I have ever executed. Besides the one of taking my first breath.

I do wonder what they are actually designed to do, these corners. Even now when I look around other people’s homes, or the various shops and spaces I visit, I wonder what the corners are used for. In the home one corner became useful in the fifties, when we shoved the telly into it, wonder what that says about the telly, and for that matter about speaker boxes. Or. Maybe that is why we developed quadraphonic sound. During more recent times the corners, which once were the domain of the telly and speakers, now have a more sinister role. Many of these useless ‘public’ corner spaces are being taken up by video cameras. Spy Eyes. Cornered while in the middle of a space…. While in the home, more and more, we view the world from the same corner we were once send into for punishment. Sitting in that same corner hour after hour staring into electronic space through a computer screen. Maybe this is the corner’s most positive use yet. Maybe. Or maybe it’s the loo, a place too small for space, just four corners.

There are, of course other types of corners. The type we drive people into, by which we show once again that the corner is an awkward space, a difficult position. A place from which there is no escape.

Some particular corners I have been looking for all of my life, especially during my travels, are the four corners of the earth. Where do they exist? And if they do, what are they used for.

Closer to home in the garden, it is more interesting; there the corner is a place furthest away. The secluded place where poetry tends to be written. While, in the other extreme, corners are used for resting, especially when you are into a bout of boxing. Two people caught within four empty corners. So much negativity, no wonder they start belting each other. Another sport, which uses corners, in this case to turn a disadvantage into an advantage, are the corners of a soccer field. Once these corners are taken most players seem to use, at least for once, their heads to either make or unmake a goal.

One Sunday at the Daylesford railway station I observed someone trying to corner the market, an activity more and more local people seem to be involved in.

Once we turn the corner inside out we seem to change the negative into the positive. The corner becomes useful. The ‘corner shop’ comes to mind, as does ‘turning the corner’ and ‘just around the corner’. Then there is the ‘poets corner’, ‘the speakers corner’ and ‘corner stone’.

As in most cases though, the artists seem to have a creative answer to the problem of the negative corner. He withdraws into it and comes up with a solution.

Understanding the total negativity of the corner, and also understanding that two negatives make a positive, the artist puts two corners together and creates four. He stretches a canvas and further hides these four corners by disguising them as a landscape, a portrait or anything abstract which takes his, or her, fancy. Next time you view a painting, think of it as just another attempt to hide four totally empty corners.

Remembering my art history lessons I recall something Leonard Da Vinci once said. When painters were faced with nature and lacked inspiration he advised them to: ”Contemplate with a reflective eye the cracks in an old wall.” There is a map of the universe in the lines that time draws on an old wall. The poet also knows this. Like finding something in an empty corner. Not confinement, but the endlessness of space. Creative space. And inspiration.

Petrus                                      

art@petrusspronk.com

autumn

“Important lessons. Look carefully. Record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.” from 'Fugitive Pieces' by Anne Michaels

Art exist to disturb the sleep of the world.

This is what the artist and poet do.

They awaken in us a sense of wonder, which is the driver of a creative life.

They take us on a journey, a special journey,

in a world where we are perishing for want wonder, not for want of wonders.

AUTUMN

I first saw the image of a persimmon painted on a Japanese tea bowl. In a few simple calligraphic brush strokes all the plumpness and desirability of that fruit was most tenderlyå expressed. Keats poem, 'Ode the Autumn', came to mind. And, having read this poem, who can forget its rich remembrance of autumns past when a poet took up his pen and sketched these lines, which became one of the most famous and loved poems: here is a reminder:

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”

Yesterday when I saw the very same persimmon, hanging from a low branch of a leafless tree. A haiku poem came to mind.

AUTUMN

The Colour is Fading at the edge of the autumn landscape. The intensity of the green has been robbed of its brilliance. The green has become impure. The green has become tinged. The green is dissolving. The green has weakened just enough to have lost its dominance as 'the prominent colour' in nature. The overwhelming colours of summer greens are slowly changing.

A little yellow is edging in. Elbowing its ways through the trees. Yellow has seen its chance and made the most of it. Yellow, the vanguard of the autumn incursion, is moving in for the take-over. Although it has only a relatively short time for its period of brilliant dominance, this time will be intense, will glow and will burn bright. The yellows will be closely followed by golds, reds, various rich browns, oranges and all the other warm reflections of the autumn colour collection.

During the following days I noticed a shy slash of scarlet, then a timid blush of copper, followed be a hesitant line of orange and here and there somewhat bashful smudges of gold. But, soon after the whole landscape came alive with a quickly changing colour palette, transforming the lush green into vermillion, saffron, tangerine, crimson, ruby red, lutea yellow, magenta and many more. Mother nature has opened her paintbox and, tentatively, dipped in her brush. A splash here, a dab there, a little run of colour on this and a splatter of hue on that. In time she will become bolder until, in the end, she will blow all caution to the wind. Generously, with abandon, she will throw about all he colours she has at her disposal. In an absolute frenzy she will speed-spray-paint everything which was green.

Here, before our very eyes, colours are indiscriminately mixing and dancing together to provide us with a visual feast which seems to know no bounds. Add to that the fragrances associated with this season and we are in for a feast. A wonderful sensual feast.

On the way to winter, nature leaves a colourful wake.

If this is taken to its natural conclusion we know how this colour celebration will end. All the colour will drain out of the landscape and in the end leaves it pure white after the first flurries of snow. the silent white of snow. The stillness of no colour. Ahhhh.....

autumn delights Always the same. Always different.

Autumns now and remembered from the past. A time once again remembered in the visual splendour of the rich deep red plumpness of a simple persimmon placed on a white ceramic dish.

Petrus

art@petrussspronk.com