Land Marks ©John O’Grady 2015
Oil on deep edged canvas 12″ x 12″ x 1.75″
SOLD
It does not require framing and is ready to hang.
‘Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street.’
William Blake
The visionary poems of William Blake often appear enigmatic. I am sure this quote on first reading alludes to the physical task and rewards of climbing a mountain or the insights that could be gleaned from communing with such a sentinel looming in the distance as opposed to the aimless ‘jostling in the street’.
I know that he was well aware of the transfer of land from the public to the few and how Enclosure Acts (please scroll down to William Blake’s ‘Charter’d’ London on the link) brought this about in the 18th century.
My own reading is that he saw these ‘sentinels’ as just that, guardians of the land that watch man’s petty drawing of straight lines on a map. They are temporal. This boundary or that frontier will all turn to dust in the end while the mountain will still be there, immutable and impassive. The painting ‘The Fallow Field’ explores the same theme.
Perhaps, as Blake says, the ‘great things are done’ when we understand our relationship to the mountain. The climbing of it can also be seen as a metaphor for the evolution of a spiritual relationship with the land.
This painting of the wide open expanse of bogland and mountains in the west of Ireland came to my mind when I read the Blake quote. Initially, it had no clear footprint of man upon the land but then, I remembered the straight lines of fences that ran across the bog.
Even this bleak and beautiful landscape has the stamp of ownership however temporary it may be.
I would love to hear what you think.
Hi John absolutely love your blogs , the painting is divine!!
Thank you very much Elles
This is beautiful, John — particularly the light, the mist, and the shared colors in the sky and the mountains. The mountains have a dignified and timeless quality; whereas the fence, a great visual punctuation mark here, seems flimsy and temporary. I am reminded of the struggles between European settlers and the native people in North America, who believed that no one could own the land or its animals and that all humans were stewards of the earth.
As always, your inspiration and your references are fascinating!
Hello Josephine,
The same thoughts ran through my mind as I was writing the piece, regarding the native people in North America and their beliefs.
I was trying to imbue the mountain with an internal glow with the colour. I had in mind a Rothko glow (if only) so it would look like it had an internal life force.
Yes the flimsy fence seemed to work well as a foil for the solidity of the mountain. I do like Blake and that dissenting tradition he comes from. Thank you for your great insights on the painting and getting me thinking. The most interesting and revealing parts are always in the discussion after I post!
It’s funny — I wrote “spiritual” in reference to the mountain at first, then edited it out. But with that glow you have indeed captured a sense of an internal life force, although my written response fell short. It’s difficult to articulate these things, isn’t it? (Rothko was a genius — reproductions don’t begin to capture the essence of the work, and I get so irritated with his detractors!) Your painting is full of life and feeling — and, interestingly, to my eye, the foreground within the fence has a very different emotional quality than the land beyond it.
I couldn’t agree more Josephine, just to be in the same room as a Rothko is a charged emotional experience. He managed to distill something extraordinary. Yes it certainly is hard to put into words!
The foreground is intentionally very different in mood and more textured lots of scraping and gouging and layering on. The boundary or the fence really started of with the ‘The Fallow Field and the commemoration for the beginning of the 1st world war. I got quite upset by the hijacking on social media of what was the slaughter of millions became a perverted celebration of what really transpired. The crazy moving of a line on a map would cost the loss of thousands of lives at each heave, so senseless. anyway I am rambling. Enjoy the rest of your weekend
I found your thoughts and comments fascinating John and this painting is a real beauty – so full of interest. The thin, spindly fence seems to play a major role in the work and immediately catches the eye echoed somehow by the natural ‘veins’ and ridges in the mountain. It does indeed illustrate the futility of human attempts to own, apportion and label. I have been struck by such thoughts when in Scotland where tree plantations with harsh straight lines cuts across mountainsides. The painting itself is very skilfully produced with the soft mists, shadowy patches and textured foreground but not forgetting the glow of sunlight on the top. Many congratulations!
Hello Christine
Glad you like the painting. Yes the fence seems to be the main protagonist alright. That’s a really interesting point about the plantations of trees also running in straight lines as well. We seem to want to order nature. I was thinking of our old friend Capability Brown and the manicuring of nature. Thank you for your thoughtful comment on the painting Christine, I never even realised the veins echoed the fence until you mentioned it.