Stand-alone Art

Even when working towards a general theme, stand-alone art, rather than creating illustrations for other people’s written work, allows me the opportunity to indulge more in my own ideas and experiments; it is no wonder that so many of my favourite pieces exist here. While putting this section together, it has also affirmed to me how much I like weaving together my own text with my visual work. It has also given me another nudge to take my stand-alone written work more seriously too.

Aire Place Studios

Breakwater Art Gala

FourThreeThree

Gallarie V

Penumbra: The Stanislaus State Literary and Art Journal

Persephone: The Harvard Undergraduate Classics journal

Roots and their Branches

The Primer

University College, Oxford

All Pieces

Aire Place Studios

Leeds, June 2022

Breakwater Art Gala

Oxford, January-February 2023

Ascend

The floral season is dwindling.

It’s getting hazy round the edges,

clusters of flowers are just changing to a rust colour.

The dense oak is growing up;

I am falling down its creeping branches.

I’m coming back to the shining black centre again

-to the milky-eyed crow.

We’ve been growing closer.

Intertwined with its mass,

we are about to ascend.

This piece is composed of many overlapping layers representing the ‘wine dark sea’ so often referenced by Homer. The text is composed in Ancient Greek and is written from the perspective of Penelope as she waits for her husband to finally return home. It reads:

Greek

ὑφαίνουσα γλυκείαν ἀοιδὴν σοι ᾄδω ἐπὶ τῳ ἱστῳ, ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ

ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ, ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ, ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ

διώξεις τὴν ἐμὴν φωνὴν οἴκαδε, ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ;

ὦ Ὀδυσσεῦ; ὦ Ὀδυσσεῦ;

ἔρχοιο ἂν, εἰ τῆς Σειρῆνος ἀοιδὴν ᾄδοιμι, ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ;

ὦ ᾿Οδυσσεῦ...

English

O Odysseus, I sing a sweet song for you, weaving on my loom.

O Odysseus, O Odysseus, O Odysseus.

Will you follow my voice home, Odysseus?

Odysseus? Odysseus?

Would you come if I sang a Siren's song?

Odysseus...

Many thanks to Marina for checking my translation and offering edits, as well as for insisting that accents be included…

(Being auctioned as signed prints).

FourThreeThree

USA

Gallarie V

Cambridge, February-April 2022

Unravelling

For some time

-at a distance-

I endeavoured.

But to no purpose.

My extraordinary motions are-

insignificant.

Lost crying made me

withdraw

whence I could have the pleasure of fatigue.

Keeping in,

I was to find that I was afraid.

My unraveling,

she had made.

I want to Grow and to Bloom

Periodically , dying down is necessary for the cultivation of me

and I want to grow and to bloom in colour,

varying from white to deep blackish purple.

But I have become completely engrossed

in winding symbiosis-

to flower together

as wild plants so often do.

And eventually,

lead to considerable defoliation.

Penumbra: The Stanislaus State Literary and Art Journal

California

Flore Pleno

In a barren country,

a figure appeared from nowhere,

a rose breeder.

We grew small plants,

heart-shaped,

each petal blotched Currant red

with tuberous roots,

permanently criss-crossing.

They acclimatized themselves firmly,

The colony was seeding freely-

profusely-

not aware of that attribute at the time of planting.

At this point,

it is chaos

in flore pleno.*

*Flore Pleno is the scientific prefix for a double-flowered plant, and this was its original meaning within the horticultural magazine from which I cut out theses two words. In the context of this poem, however, I have taken these two words in the ablative, singular case from the Latin ‘flos, floris’ (3rd masculine), meaning ‘flower’ and ‘plenus, plena, plenum’ (2-1-2 adjective), meaning ‘full’, thus translating the phrase into English as ‘in full bloom’.