This painting
is by way of walking backwards
in a circle.
Retracing steps along my path
to here.
I have it in mind to make my way back
to the beginning.
When I first met the island.
Which was by way of
the gift of Lynn.
You can find most of the breadcrumbs I’ve been leaving
sprinkled throughout my paintings.
It’s all there
if you know where to look.
Some of the signposts I’ve left
are bolder than others.
This one is positively screaming
at the top of her joyful lungs…
I was here.
Reduced slowly and with a wild patience
like the simmering of a fine balsamic glaze
the essence of camp, for me,
will always be Lynn’s spirit.
And like the foundation of the island itself
the embodiment of her soul, for me,
is that Chilmark wall.
She was its tender caretaker.
It was her mission and her meditation
to clear it every year
of the entwining vegetation.
Whose mission it was every year
to further obscure
those rugged faces.
Those ancient maplines of New England.
So as I work my way back
I’ve begun to reach out
and to play around the edges.
I’ve been dancing around this idea
that in order to tell the story
to do justice to the monumental opening
in the fabric of my time
which was her introducing me
to the Vineyard
I would need to paint her wall.
I want it to be big
bigger than life
like Lynn’s life always was.
But the muses seem to want me
to come in sideways.
Gently gently.
So this year I made a start.
The wall in Jane’s Crow is a little sliver.
And this one the next
only a little bit more substantial
and with a sidestep
which the Muses threw in my path
by way of Krista Tippet and an episode of OnBeing.
She was interviewing the nature writer Robert MacFarlane
primarily about his new book, Underland, A deep time journey,
and the conversation wound its way to the image of
“the ghost hand”.
I knew instantly when I heard his description
that I had my way into this painting.
Actually, until that moment
I had no idea that this WAS going to be a painting.
It literally sprang onto the easel.
When it happens like that
I jump right the way over and let it flow.
I’m still circling
but this is an important pebble on that road.
The oft painted line of white rocks
has been fortified
with one single stone left
to keep us safe on that bluff.
The sea still rises beyond
but viewed only through the lacy openings
like those of the ancient laid Celtic Ceide.
I’m going to transcribe the original quoted conversation here
and let you sit with it for a spell
A hand …
reaching across time…
and into the future.
OnBeing – ep. 962 Recorded in 2019
Robert MacFarlane
“There is one image at the heart as it were of Underland, and OF THE Underland, which is the hand.
The open palm, the stretched fingers, and that we know first, is in a way the first mark of art.
The maker would place their hand on the cave wall and then take a mouthful of ochre, red ochre often,
and then spit the dust against the hand and then pull the hand away and so you leave the ghost print.
And, for me, (it is) that hand, that open hand, that is reaching across time, that is pressing against rock,
but leaning also into the future, but also the hand of help and collaboration…and I found it everywhere.”