culture

Someone asked me the other day if my forms could be from the West, or if they had to be from the East. For me the question is not so much West or East, but only about what I know. I have little schooling in Anglo-European culture. I left school early and had no schooling in my Graeco-Roman heritage. I was always looking outward to other cultures, away from the grey land of my birth, where I had no place, no connection.

I was an outsider to the formal systems that hold most people - family, schooling, university. In my first yoga class at the age of 12 something breathed connection into my body. As a young adult, when everyone else was studying Greek Philosophers and European History, I was studying ancient Indian kingdoms, philosophies and art.

I made many trips to India in my twenties and thirties, to travel, to work, to study. In India I felt alive, I was free, the world touched me. Strange as it seems, I am a stranger still to most of what's around me. Indian culture is the lens through which I see the world.

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January

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dance beyond supernature

Speak to me about the making of images

Without a knowledge of the art of dancing
the rules of painting are very difficult to understand

Please speak to me about the rules of dancing

The practice of dancing is difficult to understand
by one who is not acquainted with music
Without music, dancing cannot exist at all.

So tell me first about music

Without singing music cannot be understood
He who knows the rules of singing
Knows everything properly.


At the beginning of the long period that the dancers have been attempting to come into my paintings, I was fascinated by South Indian Chola Bronzes (c.8th century) of Nataraja, the version of Shiva who is always portrayed dancing. At that point, I rejected the idea of working with images of Indian gods because it seemed to be too far a stretch in terms of the Anglophone/European context. By this I mean that as most people in this context didn't have any sense of the complexity of the cultural context of Indian gods and their images, using these images was going to take people's interpretive frames too far in what for me was the wrong direction.

I thought that my current dancers had appeared as a manifestation of ordinary, luscious life, which India has always celebrated in a variety of fulsome ways (contrary to many popular ideas, the Indian textual tradition fully accepts worldly engagement and encourages its full embrace, albeit in the right way and at the right time of life...).

Recently, however, I noticed that in the traditions of painting that I was studying the women were covered up, and yet all the women on the temples at Belur and Halebid (the research I did last year in Karnataka) had exposed breasts, and sometimes exposed whole bodies (though they're not naked, they're adorned/protected by heavy jewellery, more on this another time....). Eventually I remembered the tradition of the devadasi, women who were dedicated to the temple at a young age, whose purpose was to dance as an offering to the temple deity. This tradition was, like so many others, misinterpreted by the British and their disapproval eventually transformed the understanding of that tradition, both inside and outside of India.

So now I'm back in the temple compound, even though my dancers are quite clearly ordinary humans. And I am suddenly in the midst of what dance means in the larger Indian tradition as a whole. Not so much that Shiva danced, but the fact that as the creator and destroyer of the universe, the One, omnipresent God danced (don't trouble yourself with how Shiva can be the One, omnipresent God when you know about Krishna or Devi, just take my word for it. The 'Western' understanding of India's multiplicity of gods has suffered the same problems as the temple dancing tradition..).

I just came across a description of a series of temples in South India which relate to a Shiva legend.

'The Thyagarjar Temple as Tiruvarur is famous for the ajapa thanam (dance without chanting) that is executed by the deity itself. According to legend, a Chola king obtained a boon from Indra and wished to receive an image of the deity presiding in the temple. Indra tried to misguide the king and had six other images made, but the king chose the right image. The other six images are installed at six other temples.

All seven images are said to dance when taken in procession.'

(abridged from wikipedia)

Here are the dances which take place in the seven temples:


Dance without chanting, resembling the dance of Shiva

Dance of an intoxicated person

Dancing like the waves of the sea

Dancing like a cock

Dancing like a bee that hovers over a flower

Dance like a lotus that moves in the breeze

Dancing with the gait of a swan

Speak to me about the making of images

Without a knowledge of the art of dancing
the rules of painting are very difficult to understand

Please speak to me about the rules of dancing

The practice of dancing is difficult to understand
by one who is not acquainted with music
Without music, dancing cannot exist at all.

So tell me first about music

Without singing music cannot be understood
He who knows the rules of singing
Knows everything properly.

Selective translation of the opening verses of the Vishnudharmottaram, an Indian text on painting

If you sing, you can know music

If you know music, you can know dance

If you know dance, then you can paint

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December

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November December

Glasgow street scene...

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Dancing with a brush

A lovely piece by my friend and colleague Karen Strang in the local paper this week...

Artists' Quarter

Dancing with a brush. 

I'm fortunate not only in having a studio at Marcelle House, Alloa, but that I share this hub of creativity with so many artists, all of whom have a unique style of expression. Every studio reveals a different imaginative space. For my first arts feature I'll focus on the work of fellow resident Tamsin Haggis. Tamsin grew up in Scotland and studied art at St Martins School of Art in London. A few days ago she was host to an inspiring talk by Karen Haggis on Nepalese textiles, and her room was adorned with a colourful display of woven nettle, embroidered cotton and silk. Not every painting studio could happily accommodate these beautiful exotic fabrics without them detracting from the wall works yet in this instance they complemented the original artworks. Anyone stepping into Tamsin's studio is immediately struck by the large colourful free form drawings that hang all around. Add to that a mix of eclectic surround sound and a floor area which entices dance and movement practice and you get the picture... or rather an all round myriad of material connected to all the senses which celebrate being alive.

It is  a dynamic environment, which reflects the Indian philosophy of life energy which Tamsin has studied, both in her degree in Indian Art and Philosophy, and as an Artist living and working in North India. Her recent return to South India to study temple sculptures reaffirmed for her the connection between dance and life energy, not only in her personal practice, but also in her subject matter. We see exuberant figures in her paintings, which represent symbolically the movement of energy within ourselves and in the wider sphere of the earth. In keeping with ancient traditions of Indian painting, Tamsin's dancers are deliberately not anatomically correct: arms and legs stretch beyond what is physically possible in order to express the inner sense of unbounded movement that dancing provides and which uplifts our spirits. In other words they are a joy just to look at. In order to produce these energetic characters Tamsin has to dance them onto the paper with her brush or charcoal. Creating art this very physical way means that her work extends into other connecting areas of expression.

Music is an important factor in enriching the visual work. As part of her practice she improvises on violin, viola, mandolin and piano, and she also works in collaboration with others. The airy Georgian drawing room at Marcelle House has been completely transformed into an exotic multi sensory space where anything might happen... The bright earthy warm hues that fill her studio contrast with the cool muted urban tones outside and from her window you can see the edge of the industrialized Forth and the glass works - a neat coincidence then that some of Tamsin’s work also utilises that fundamental material, sand.

Many of the abstract images on display in her studio evoke the patterns found in nature. Her sand paintings are actual records of the physical qualities of sand. You might just remember these patterns from your school days as Fibonacci's sequence. In my time the engineers to be, some of whom went on to work at United Glass, would have understood the applied mathematics behind these patterns, but for me, this is way more inspiring than my maths lesson ever was. In Tamsin's work the creative element adds to the natural mathematical principles, providing even more evolving patterns. The process of producing her sand paintings is fascinating to watch. Tamsin takes a large sheet of paper and scatters and runs sand onto the paper using various instruments. After creating an image, she then suddenly agitates the paper, in an instant destroying the beauty of the forms she has created. As she shakes the paper the sand shifts and creates various moving patterns, some of which she captures on camera. Finally she sweeps up the sand and everything is gone.  This process neatly illustrates the idea that everything in nature has an energy, even unliving objects such as paper and silica. We can all agree in that looking at a painting, which is an inanimate object, we can 'see' the movement the artist used in making the mark. Only in this case it is the process that Tamsin values at least as much as the finished product. She is making a philosophical point with this work about dynamic process of change, destruction and renewal. It is impossible not to experience a sense of vitality in Tamsin's studio and to take in the whole atmosphere. It is a unique creative space where East and West meet for a metaphorical cup of tea and it's here in Alloa!

Marcelle House artists can be visited by appointment, or on one of the regular open days and every first Sunday of the month 12-4 pm.

Alloa Advertiser, November, 2014

dancers and others