Award winning, not-for-profit arts publication reflecting on mental wellbeing. Produced and curated by Alice Bradshaw, Vanessa Haley & Lenny Szrama in collaboration with Penistone Line Partnership. Founded in 2018. Currently funded by Penistone Line Partnership, ACORP, Northern & CrossCountry.
The perfect size
and the perfect shape
Organically forming
A perfect landscape.
The life within,
A single race,
Dependent on sharing
The beautiful space.
The wisdom of ages
The wonders of art
A singular component
Of our Big Bang start.
But a little plastic man,
who’s been here but a blink,
Seems hell-bent on pushing it
Right over the brink.
I entered a place of need
Not empty at all, but overflowing
with dearth.
And I was filled with holes.
Holes where things used to be.
Holes where things were supposed to be.
Holes that I thought should be filled
To be my complete me.
But the holes are who I was then.
I tried to throw my holes away
Angry how their weight held me down.
But swat as hard as I may
They kept floating back in.
How can they be so bubbly buoyant
When they’re so damn weighty?
I wanted to get rid of my holes,
Though each one was something I sought.
Just give them away, Here!
But no one wanted my holes.
They were, after all, all Mine.
So I clung to my holes with greed.
Certain they would sustain me.
As consumed with devoid as I could be
I thought I might never be empty.
So in this lightless place
Alone with all my holes
In ignorance
I plucked one to look closer.
And seeing that nothing was in it
It ceased to exist at all.
Folks come here full of holes
all the time.
When one can see there’s nothing there,
Then they can see
all that is.
“Holding It Together”
It’s ‘Just a Scratch’.
A little road rash.
But I’m holding it together.
Don’t mean to bitch,
But I’m ‘Slippin’ a Stitch’.
I feel I could untether.
Won’t lose it yet,
Could use a ‘Safety Net’…
It’s coming apart completely.
It’s too late.
‘Broken’ by fate.
How did it defeat me?
Large oil on canvas (160 x 180cm) image painted from a stereoscope card dated 1904 shows fishing boats floating in towards shore after a lon days work. This iamge i chose as a metaphor for the isolation space existing between us all and the slowing down of time in our daily lives due to the corona virus.
This work was created as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic where I am grateful for all that we do have rather than a sense of lack. Currently working form my home studio with my partner also working from home and my 12.5-year-old dog. We have more than enough. Enough love, food, company, entertainment, laundry, and gratitude. My brain may be wandering to anxious places during these times, but I know I can be calmed by focusing on the abundance of what we do have.
My work is about the silence surrounding us during this pandemic. It highlights moments of reflection, as well as heightened observation during this period. In isolating ourselves in our home we yearn for moments of connection and congruence, and thus start viewing the world in a new light, tinged with longing and silence.
This particular illustration was conceived after a quiet walk to the grocery store. I spotted a discoball hanging outside a window in a nondescript building. It was a strange, cinematic moment. Not a soul outdoors, except maybe a few far off. And in the silence of a moment that held very subtle signs of life here and there, this discoball seemed too loud, too incongruous, almost vulgar. And I recognised in it a foreignness, a resignation, of a world that I can’t touch or experience. A world that we humans have misunderstood. Beneath the thin film onto which we are firmly stuck, breeding, brooding, writhing, there is a world of silence that exists independently of us, that has retreated into itself because we haven’t understood it. We have festooned it with our ideas and truths and theories and opinions, but it endures. In all the chaos of the world there exist discoballs on balconies, that endure. I then resumed my walk, and saw the discoball turn away, unconcerned and oblivious, as it exited my sight.
I’m interested in how we very rarely see ourselves as others do. Do we have a good side? I’ve taken to splitting the image to show the two sides to a portrait.
@andrew_daly_2020
