Art of '23

This is the third time that each person in our family has created an original painting around the time of the New Year. I think I truly can call it a tradition now because it was AJ who reminded me this year.

Left: AJ, Right: Dani, Centre: Mr. Turtle

The girls, of course, create art constantly: any time is the best time. It is as natural as breathing to them. Mr. Turtle and I need to be more deliberate about it.

Previous years: 2021, 2022

I was the last to participate. The idea that came to me was to do something organic, abstract and inspired by ancient cultures. Sometime completely different from last year's attempted realism and symbolism.

I started by collecting a few images, specifically from Neolithic Ireland and Mesopotamia. But it was after reading the beautiful essay Time Unweaved by Flat Caps and Fatalism that I felt I was onto something.

My creation for 2023:

My workspace before I tidied up:

I started with a pencil sketch, but didn't particularly like my sketch, so I painted a texture over the pencil markings, mostly covering them. Then I painted my spirals, which was a lot of fun. As I was painting I was listening to my Ancient Mesopotamia lectures about the peoples of early civilization working with plaster, clay, bronze, copper and gold, and the colours I was drawn to echoed those materials. After working on the spirals, I noticed I could still faintly see some of my pencil drawings, so I painted in those designs here and there, and also added new ones.

"If time is a directionless field for the email worker, a forward arrow for the mill hand, and a turning circle for the peasant, then what is it to the people who know how to stay alive? Perhaps it is the spiral, of which there are many prehistoric examples in Yorkshire.

"The spiral has the rhythm of agricultural time without the lie that we can return to the same point. It has the movement of mechanical time without the lie that it has a direction. It has the all-encompassing field of flat time without the lie that nothing will change. Perhaps we can sing a spiral song with the world awhile." --FFatalism, Time Unweaved