And breathe ...
Here is an image which could feed your soul.
Hattie Lockhart-Smith is a printmaker who shows her work with Sussex Printmakers.
This beautiful image is one of three she has created on the same theme, a tower of balanced pebbles from the seashore. It measures roughly 40cm high. As always, getting the colour reproduction correct online is difficult. Imagine cool colours with the stones standing clear of the surface.
Let's say before anything else that these stones are carefully observed and drawn. The colouring feels authentic. We imagine that we are being presented with an unadorned subject, free of any embellishment except for some shadowing to give them form. Removing any kind of context or background from a subject has the effect of focusing our attention. Rather like the best meditation practice, we are freed from any distractions, freed to rest with the image.
So stay with this image, give it time.
In other posts here, we have thought about art bringing us into the presence of something. Hattie's print does this in a particular way. She has isolated the pile of stones so that it seems to be floating. But has also given it a weight which puts us in mind of the balancing trick such a tower would require. For many people, the kind of presence they would feel drawn into by this would be one of balance. That's quite an achievement for pigment on paper.
Get to see Hattie's work if you can. Allow it some time.
And breathe.
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