Blog Stats
- 67,545 hits
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
-
Recent Posts
- Covehithe Ochres and Gissing Whites: Hand-Made Paints from Foraged Pigment November 2, 2019
- Indeterminacy: The Blueberry Interlude: Cold Dyeing with Blueberry Stems October 15, 2019
- More Notes from a Melody Not Yet Written October 14, 2019
- Notes from a Melody Not Yet Written October 13, 2019
- Liminal Space, the Prepared Piano and Indeterminacy – a Quick Note to Myself and Anybody Reading October 5, 2019
Archives
- Aesthetics Allotmenteering Art Artist Books Artist Sketchbooks Art Journal Christian writing Collage & Assemblage Creativity Dialogue Drawing Eco/Natural Dyeing and Printing Ecology Encaustic Art Folklore & Mythology Inspiration Mixed Media Music Nature Journal Photography Printmaking Research Reviews Science Short Story Writing Singing spirituality Stitch Walking Writing
Meta
Tag Archives: Assemblage
A Weekly Honing: Yellow: The Amber Lake
The Amber Lake
This week’s word to contemplate from Hone Life, is yellow. (Do check out Hone Life for the complete collection of reflections on the word of the week).
Though yellow conjures up sunshine and spring – warmth, growth, abundance, renewal – for me it’s a difficult colour to work with as an artist – it’s a bullying colour – and I can’t go near the yellow of a rapeseed crop in full bloom; that’s a yellow that plunges hot pokers into my eyes. I was pondering how to write sympathetically about yellow while working on a little mixed media collage/assemblage. The penny dropped when coating the substrate with shellac. I was using amber shellac. I thought immediately of heavy water.
This is the heavy water Gaston Bachelard writes about in Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. It’s in reference to the poems of Edgar Allen Poe and Bachelard admits in his observations to drawing on the analysis of Poe’s works by Freud enthusiast and benefactor Marie Bonaparte.
Amber is fossilised pine tree resin, secreted in response to injury, to seal and sterilise. It is probably observation of this which led to medicinal uses of amber, which date back to the time of Hippocrates, and forward to the early 20th century. One could say then of amber that it is a yellow which heals. Continue reading
Posted in Art, Collage & Assemblage, Encaustic Art, Mixed Media, spirituality, Writing
Tagged amber, amber shellac, Assemblage, Book Reviews, collage, damar resin, Dante G Rossetti, Edgar Allen Poe, encaustic, Freelance Writing, Gaston Bachelard, Hone Life, Mixed media, Poetry, resin fossil, Spiritual, The Amber Lake, Theme, Upper Carboniferous, Victorian poetry
Leave a comment