Alison's watermarks
(A text inspired by images created by Alison Churchill. The pics have been borrowed from her FB wall)
"Nobori", Japanese flags dangling in mid-air, characters of a language expressing the great Void at the heart of creation, its origin: enso circles accompanied by inscriptions.
With her paintbrush, the artist draws her marks in a single blow, like a zen high-priestess, guided by an inner light coming from outside for, at the moment of creation, there is neither within nor without, no difference between what is received and what is given out. She performs a pure act; the result, the hanging banners we see, are the aftermath of that blow.
There, we may see the storms that swirl across the sky since the beginning of time, the unknown hurricanes that blow in distant planets, or perhaps circles formed in a pond as an apple falls into it from a branch above, causing ripples that grow and then stop.
These watermarks look like wavering amoebas or quivering molecules, elementary particles, protozoa, embryos and cells, a world of potency, a world in the make, which is the same as a world in the wane. They are big galaxies, black holes or pulsating quasars.
Enso's power: the symbol of the void, a good way for us, unheeding but enthralled adepts, to begin to think and maybe begin to understand the nature of truth, its transcending quality. Art as real or art as fake, a metaphor and a visual representation of that unimaginable emptiness from which everything comes and to which everything will return.
Enso's mystery: a circle quickly drawn, in one single brush stroke, the ink gradually fading into nothingness, a broad mark made in one breath, darker intensity that grows pale, energy losing strength, a shooting star in the summer sky, light melting into dark space, white noise that grows increasingly faint, water that evaporates.
These watermarks flow from the depths where time and space coalesce. The artist has no self, she's an instrument blending with her brush to produce a whole universe with her decisive strokes, a pure moment of bliss that lasts both a second and an eternity. The rest, the banners, is the damage left in the storm's wake, noise fading into silence.
(Fragment of a work in progress, a book putting into words the work of Alison, Norman A Son and Richard Stott, with the collaboration and guidance of Yuen Fong)