Ups and Downs

Moon is Downstairs K Howell Charcoal on board 6cm x 13 cm

 

 

     Stairs always give a space a lift. This set is incredible. Worn by time, this staircase is reverting to an organic, natural shape. The carefully cut stones have been hollowed by footsteps and collecting rainwater, the sharp edges lost over the years. I talked about an old painting of a new staircase-in-progress here. These stairs are nestled in a ruin dating to the 8th or 9th century. Some contrast.
     The stonework I've been looking at is amazing. Red sandstone hewn by Anglo Saxon tools and weathered by the elements. I've lots of development work to do, but it's satisfying  to be en route.
     Do you have a favourite flight? 

Exhibition at the Lancaster Environment Centre is on until 16 June 2012. A thumbnail gallery is available to view on my website .

Stairs: A Case Study

Rise K Howell Acrylic on Board 92 cm x 122 cm

     I've been cleaning this painting up, preparing it for a new home, and stairs have been on my mind. 
     Stairways are the spinal column of our living space. They embody the ups and downs of our everyday existence, a constant reminder that every endeavour is made up of incremental efforts. The stairs seem to provoke a strop in the resident four-year-old, and I can only conclude that between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m., they seem insurmountable. Some days, I quite concur.
     Rise was informed by a visit to a garden-in-progress, and seeing the raw, stacked material for the stairs in place, it seemed an expression of longing and determination, a plan for the creation of a small paradise.
     Stairs are all about aspiration and challenge.

         
  It's a flight for a reason.

    
     Building the staircase was what Mircea Eliade would call an Ascension rite, a consecrating and determining activity that sublimates a profane space into a sacred one. (I'm hoping you feel a garden is a sacred space, and you stay with me on this one.) 
     Stairs, Jung says, symbolize the process of psychic transformation in which the contents of the unconscious are brought into conscious awareness. The stairs are an expression of the paradoxical wish to achieve an ideal form within the framework of human existence. Of course, the stairs also mean people can reach the top of the garden. 
       
     Shamanic traditions hold the tree as the ladder to the heavens. So there it is. Even when I try to digress, it always comes back to trees.