Two of this month’s daily prompts: 17, MATERIAL WORLD (as a pattern), and 20, LINE, found their way into the same artwork this last week.
The image of the sea was taken here at the coast, then combined with a pattern from the interior of our car. Layered together, the crinkled, patterned surface of the plastic became the texture of the water. Both beautiful and toxic at the same time.
The resulting image I have named: The standard (automotive-grade) plastic sea.
This work is a demonstration of how you never quite know where creativity will appear. Work through the prompts and inspiration finds you.
Join in at #COLCP26 and check out the prompts here.
At a recent Create & Connect art session, we completed the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test, devised by psychologist Ehrig Wartegg in 1934. The idea is simple. A series of lines and shapes. You complete them. You reveal yourself. You can read more about it here.
What emerged from it, after sitting with the drawings for a while afterwards, was a need to write it all down, what were the drawings telling me about myself. The result is this poem. It is called The Aesthete (due to a different personality test) and explores my needs and identity.
Needs Analysis of The Aesthete
I need space, to process internally. I need emotional space: emotionally rich, but not emotionally loud. I need to express my emotional movement. I seek beauty. I seek new and different. I seek the wonders of the world around me.
I need clear and defined. I need reliability, clarity and low drama. I need emotional distance. I seek positivity.
I need focus, discipline, and a sense of forward movement. I need a system of structured freedom. I need fairness, rules, or strategy. I need a few rules I can break. Are you bored reading this yet? I seek art forms that reinforce my optimistic outlook.
I need well-matched. I need grounded expression and balance. I seek sound. I need to be quietly fulfilled. I seek colour.
I need peace, perspective and possibility. I need quiet happiness, nature and imperfection. I seek to wash away the dust of every day life.
I need real and alive. I seek real and alive. I feel real and alive.
The image attached to this post came later: a wall by the bus stop, a face emerging from the cracks, and written in someone else’s hand: En esta esquina, grita conmigo, que haya paz en el mundo. On this corner, shout with me, let there be peace in the world.
It felt like The Aesthete had found a wall to live on.
Words By Clarence Greenway for Heronbam Books. Image created by Coast of Light.
As the temperature rises, some recent photographs have found their way into this new piece, a first swim at the beach, and a dried flower I passed on the way there. Layered together onto a Jasmine White background, the result feels very much like the area right now, especially in the early morning, when the light is soft and the beach is still yours alone.
A medida que suben las temperaturas, algunas fotografías recientes han encontrado su camino en esta nueva pieza, un primer baño en la playa, y una flor seca que encontré de camino. Superpuestas sobre un fondo Blanco Jazmín, el resultado evoca muy bien el ambiente de la zona en este momento, especialmente por las mañanas, cuando la luz es suave y la playa todavía es tuya.
JASMINE WHITE: the background, the space between things. COASTAL STRAW: dry grass in the heat, the colour of July arriving early. MAR ESMERALDA: the sea on a clear morning, deep and still. ALMADRABA, warm terracotta skin, the ancient tuna fishing grounds of the coast.
Use them however you like. A wash of background colour, a single brushstroke, a filter, a frame. The prompts this month and every month can be found here.
Last Sunday I spent some time under the great ficus tree near La Caleta beach in Cádiz, watching Anna (@absowm_art) do bark rubbings on its trunk. There’s something lovely about stopping, and just observing. I was taking various pictures, and back home I layered them into this finished piece, the tree’s energy finding its way through the whole image.
El domingo pasado pasé un rato bajo el gran ficus cerca de la playa de La Caleta en Cádiz, observando a Anna (@absowm_art) hacer frotados de corteza en su tronco. Hay algo muy especial en detenerse y simplemente observar. Fui haciendo fotos, y en casa las fui superponiendo hasta llegar a esta pieza final — la energía del árbol abriéndose paso por toda la imagen.
La obra estará disponible próximamente en la tienda.
