Gathering the Elements
A year ago I attended an artists' workshop held at Lancaster Great House here in Barbados, one of the ever dwindling plantation main houses that are all gradually losing the battle to greed for land and condos. A heritage unravelling.Before I arrived at Lancaster House thoughts of red and white roses jostled for position with visions of spirals, winding paths, DNA, past present and future coming together and exploding outwards from the gathering point that is a Great House.
Roses were roughly shouldered out of the way by the gleam of polished mahogany, the layered bite of bark on my hands, the evocative shapes of the pods that launch the seeds on their way to new life.
I became a gatherer; of images, of objects. Words left me and my gaze became my link between the internal and external. My blood sang to me of history, my personal present informed my fingers and vision became concrete.
The vivid generous energy of the workshop, gently guided and directed by Sonia Boyce has been a crucible in which I flamed, melted, reformed and emerged with a new awareness of my own vision, the elements of self reinforced and expanded.
The elements exist, I did not, cannot, make them I merely present them in a pattern that has meaning for me on several levels; that may resonate for you.