Reflections and notes on the relationship of art to nature and of nature to art from along Warwoman Creek, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Katuah Province of Turtle Island, where the light, the dark, the seasons, the time of deep past, deep present and deep future all mix in alchemal mists to reveal and hide and transform these slopes, shaded coves, bright rivers, deep forests and me, and together sustain me and my art.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

New Work Featured in Flyway: Journal of Writing and the Environment

Recent work from the Seedlight Series:

http://flyway.org/art/visual-art-by-laurence-holden/




For 40 years I have been searching thru the layers, pealing them back, folding back their ragged corners, dissolving the patinas of their surfaces, scratching away the crusts, ashes and detritus, looking for ways the visible, the invisible, and the indivisible can be laid bare. I’ve always wanted answers; failing that, very good questions. At last I want revelation. Otherwise, I have no need for art. The word “seed” comes from the old English word”saed,” “that which may be sown; offspring, posterity,”  and in these works I have felt I have been opening a very old space within my chest.

The series began as I was preparing a workshop in the summer of 2014, “Drawing From Our Own True Nature,”  a workshop designed to offer students a glimpse into what it’s like to approach image making and understanding as if there were not such definite borders between the natural world around us and and our experience inside ourselves. As I began to define and clarify ways I might lead students into an experience that for me was wholly internal and intuitive, the vocabulary in these paintings began to develop in the studio.