Lucid Art Foundation

The ridge rises ahead A dark green wave. Bishop Pine Green. And over the other side, unseen, the vast ocean shines. The sky is transparent blue, backlit with white gold. From deep in the canyon, the sound of the little creek. Eagles soar. Woodland birds, several a spectacular blue, abound, flitting, swooping, alighting, navigating the thick tangle of branches with extraordinary precision. The lichen wrapped and festooned trees are old, sodden and some have not withstood the fury of last night’s storm.

After days of winter storm, I looked up — the full moon, silver bright. Poured into my heart. Gratitude.

The storm has brought the trees down over the road. Electrical power gone. Long hours of darkness. The eventual return of the light is magical.

The fire shifts, glows, logs collapse into ruby jewels, which pulsate and sparkle. The smell of matches! “Keep an eye on the fire.” “Put another log on the fire”. The high winds make it hard to get the fire to “draw” in the morning. Raking the embers. A roaring blaze. All these phrases having more meaning now. Known because warmth the cooking of food is dependent on its flourishing.

In the rooms, shapes still can still be perceived. Half light.

Before dawn, more drenching rain. The land is sodden,

Winter storm, power cut. Plans cut. Back to the darkness, The womb. The birth-place.

Even in the dark, something shines though, from the Inner Worlds.

Twilight. Dusk. Space, form and colour collapse into night.

Incubation.. Birthing, Release. Benevolence.

Meditation and creation

This is NOT how I work, but….! I do have a sense of when something is ready to be made or rather let go of. Rarely, but sometimes!

“Once upon a time there was a Chinese carpenter whose work was so extraordinary that the Prince of Lu called him in and said to him, "These things you make are so perfect that it does not seem possible that any human being could make them. Is it true or is it not true that in your work you have superhuman assistance?" And Ching, the carpenter, who was a very humble man, answered the Prince of Lu something like this: "First of all, when I am to make some cabinet or box of great quality, I separate myself from the world for two days. At the end of that time, I am no longer aware of title, dignity, or estate, so that no matter for whom I am making this box, I am just making it for a person. There is no longer any glamor, no longer any sense that I must make a better box because a great nobleman has ordered it. Then for two days more, I relax and meditate, and I come to the conclusion that it is of no consequence whether the box is good or bad. I no longer fear that my work will not be sufficient; I no longer hope that it will be outstanding. I have lost all interest in whether I am praised or blamed for the thing I have produced. Then, in two days more, I am no longer aware of myself. I no longer care whether I exist or not. Gradually, that part of my mind that is naturally and usually devoted to personal concerns is relaxed away from these, so that I no longer know that I have a body or that I have hands or feet. Everything becomes very quiet.

All this time I have been visualizing what I am going to build, until finally there is nothing but visualization and the object.

Having attained this degree of internal rapport with value, I then go out into the forest, or wherever the materials for the obiect are to be found, and I wander about until I find my piece of work--my box or cabinet or screen- somewhere within the body of something that already exists. I look at a tree and I say, 'There is my box? I look at bamboo and say, There is my screen.' And I am aware that I am going to move the box that is already in the tree out of the tree where it can be seen. Then I sit down quietly with all my materials, and I allow Heaven to put the box together. When Heaven puts the box together, the seams are perfect. When men put a box together, the seams are not perfect because a man will say, This seam is better than that seam,' or, I must make a good seam,' or, 'Will the purchaser be pleased with the box?' Thus all things come to nothing. But I am concerned only with the fact that Heaven makes a box, and the box that Heaven makes will please Heaven, and if I am fortunate in all these matters, the box I have made will cause the Prince of Lu to say to me, 'Did you receive superhuman help?"»

From “The Flowing Bridge” by Elaine McInnes

River rights!

https://theecologist.org/2022/aug/09/rights-rivers

I will find out where we are with river rights for the local rivers……..

Open Studios November 2022

Over 1400 visitors came to see what was happening in the two Yorkshire Artspace studio spaces this last weekend. There was a real buzz, and it was a real pleasure to invite people in to my studio. This year, it seemed that people felt more at home engaging with the work and I am sure I have found a way to communicate more easily. I had some great conversations — some so clearly on the same wavelength.

There were conversations about water, reflections, seeing. Calligraphy, script and language. About rivers and living entities. About the development of Castlegate. One woman told me about a project seeking to gain personhood status for the River Don! I had heard of this happening in other, rather more wild and exotic parts of the world….!

We displayed one of the pieces from the collaboration between me and Roanna for the Festival of the Mind — “A Mirror It does Seem” in Roanna’s studio space (next to mine).

Displaying this combination of video and words gave me great satisfaction. This expresses the original experience over ten years ago of seeing/feeling the water patterns better than anything. Full circle.

I met friends, made new connections and discovered artists in the building I hadn’t met before, including two who I know from Instagram but had no idea were in the same building!

My practice

Current personal practice

My work is informed by my practice of Zen meditation, koan training and Zen brushwork. It comprises drawings, paintings, photographs and videos which explore the mystery, energy and transformative power of water, the life force and the process of creation.

Long contemplation of the constantly changing patterns which play on the surfaces of the streams, ponds, mill-races in my nearby valley has given me direct experience of the life-force energy of the natural world. The dazzling reflections have no mass, they are empty, made of light. Playing on the mind, setting up rhythms in the body, they have been active in my work for nearly over 10 years. It is an ongoing investigation into thealiveness and sentience of the living world, which is not separate from myself. It is not limited to a specificplace, but is accessed through such deep encounters.

These vibrations are not expressed literally, but in a stream of marks which have their own inner energy. In one process, I draw with water, pouring or splashing it onto translucent film. Over time it slides until it finds its own transparent form. I blow fine particles of coloured dust onto the tiny pools to make their outline and movement visible. The drafting film gives a soft and diffuse light in which they swim. As I bring these forms into life, it is as if they want to relate, communicate and evolve.

Sometimes they appear as energetic primordial marks. https://www.alisonchurchill.uk/#/lifeorigins/

Sometimes they are more like cells or primitive life forms with some small degree of sentience and intelligence. https://www.alisonchurchill.uk/#/life/ They can take the form of delicate 3D structures https://www.alisonchurchill.uk/#/lightforms/ or larger forms with greater urgency but quietly expressed.https://www.alisonchurchill.uk/#/messengers/ Responding to the world situation, the non-action in the face of climate breakdown, the COVID pandemic, my frustration in lockdown, these “Messengers” – wise ones, awakened ones – appeared, to support and confront. I am never sure how they will manifest next.

In all of this I sense the driving force in the universe towards increasing complexity, cooperation and intelligence -- quarks and neutrons to come together to form atoms, atoms to form molecules, molecules to form cells, then organisms and life forms. Syntropy, that opposite force to entropy, causing all matter to wake up!

Manifesto!

The words in bold below were spoken during a dialogue with Hester Reeve, Emma Cocker and Jessica Bell.. The additional words came to me subsequently and suddenly shortly after, forming a set of intentions or a manifesto.

“Creativity/art as a force”:

Like

• a lightning bolt -- fierce and beautiful

• the arising of morning dew -- intimate and soft

• natural

• an art movement inspired by syntropy rather than entropy

“Focussing not on the unknown, but on what is most alive.....”

• no more random roaming in the Void!

• Sensing messages from the vast, empty, full and alive spaces

• Pulling down the future

• working in the proximate world spaces

“A sensing instrument amongst other sensing instruments”

• Artists must do the individual work to awaken as sensing instruments

• and come together with others – some of whom may be doing the same work -- or not......
  no longer individual self expression

• sensing what needs to happen.....

Preparing to go to the Lucid Art Foundation in January 2023

Why am I going?

It’s remote, rare, exclusive (?), beyond….?

But it’s a beacon with a subtle power - like the force that has been drawing me forward all these years.

It is a lucid, luminous and intelligent space, I believe it is benevolent. The art associated with it is powerful and benevolent.

I know there is something important about this “benevolent” art. Rather than define it, it’s something you recognise when you see it.

Benevolent is a terms used by Mike Grady, who used to be the Director of the MA in Arts and Consciousness at JFK University. This was a word given to him by Gordon Onslow Ford, who on reviewing Grady’s work declared that it was “benevolent”.

The group of artists associated with the group Dynaton — Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, Robert Matta, Lee Mullican, These artists went beyond Surrealism to something deeper. Prior.

The Surrealists remained in the subconscious/unconsicous realm, harvesting images from the dream state which were already known from daily life, combining the familiar in an unfamiliar way, creating a sense of out of placeless, unease. And a sense of foreboding, the presence of some malignant force. No wonder, perhaps, when they were working in the 1920s, after the horrors of the 1st World War and possibly intimating what was to come. At the time the first exploration of the subconscious mind were being made by Freud, revealing the repressed drives — guilt, sexual obsession, the death wish etc.

Gordon Onslow Ford — said that the work of the artist was to “disclose aspects of the inner worlds that had never been seen before. This adventure starts with the anthropomorphic and moves towards the cosmic…………..” “Gordon Onslow Ford A Man on a Green Island”, ed by Fariba Bogzaran

Gordon Onslow Ford and Roberto Matte started to “look deeper within themselves, not so much through the symbolism of dreams —was the first generation of Surrealists were inclined to do - but in the vast space not limited by the language of the unconscious.” “Gordon Onslow Ford A Man on a Green Island”, ed by Fariba Bogzaran

This is important — that they went deeper than the early Surrealists. That they experienced Emptiness, the “Silence Alive” as GOF put it. They drew on Eastern philosophy, Buddhism, Zen. Not only that, they practiced it. Thereby experientially entering the Vast Spaces where the Universe is boing born. Moment to moment.

Eddies/fractals.......Emergent Strategy Institute

yes, this is how I can envision the future…..

“You have to work small” says adrienne maree brown. You cannot change at the top level, you have to work with the fractals, which will in turn transform the whole. Like one bird flapping its wings, when multiplied becomes a flock of birds flapping their wings together capable of performing complex and wholistic actions not possible at the individual level.

http://adriennemareebrown.net/2013/06/21/emergence-speech-from-opening-for-allied-media-conference-2013/

Work on the fractals. Make them shine, give them a spin like a prayer wheel. Like eddies in a stream

We find it difficult to change, to let go. She also says we also need to get good at dying. To let other generations have access to the resources…..

https://esii.org/about/

“Complex Movements, and Allied Media Projects—around the concepts of emergence and complex science. Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. Complex science is the investigation of how relationships between parts give rise to the collective behaviors of a system, and how systems interact to form relationships with environments.”

My proximate space -- Castlegate, Sheffield

I asked myself a question over 3 years and a half years ago, when I took on a studio at Exchange Place Studios…… How do I relate to the Castlegate area where I have my studio space? IN the centre of the City, at the confluence of the Rivers Porter/Sheaf and Don. Yes, I am connected by the River Porter, which flows through the leafy area where I live on the outskirts of the city. It’s route through and under the city maps almost exactly my journey from home to the studio whether by bus or by bike. And it seems important that this flow is not obstructed. But what have I got to do with the City area — do I belong?

I become a member of the Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust around the same time as I moved into my studio. I attend meetings, help out occasionally on stalls, became part of the SPRT Public Art Group, liaised on a collaboration between the University of Sheffield Music Department and the SPRT — a performance of sound recorded in the culverted rivers and artwork (some by me, some by Cathy Speirs). See https://www.alisonchurchill.uk/exhibitions#/life-streams/. I am now the SPRT rep on the Archeology and Heritage Interpretation Public Art group, run by Sheffield City Council.

The Castlegate site has received £14 + million from the Levelling Up Fund to transform the site from a wasteland to a public space which will attract people to come and feel at home here. A green space, a space for public art and events, to become aware of the layers of history — the Castle, the Markets, the Steel industry etc — traces of all are visible on the site. Deculverting the river, regenerating nature, reflecting Sheffield as an “Outdoor City”. How can all this be made visible in a way that brings the past, the present and the future into perspective.

Being involved in the Public Consultation workshops. Fascinating. How do you include everybody? The local residents, the recent arrivers, the many diverse communities, students, artists, the visitors, the business, etc.

“What is it that makes a space productive? What is it that makes a space challenging, exciting, embracing, inclusive, hospitable and tolerant? What is that?”

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This is powerful street art…..

The different values, worldviews….. Inviting the energy, subversive creativity of the street artists and skateboarders who use this area below, whilst preventing antagonistic and destructive behaviours. Bringing back the local inhabitants, and those who frequented the markets and are angry about how the markets were demolished leaving them dispossessed. Invoiving business, but avoiding corporate takeover, gentrification etc. The Castle enthusiasts, the academics, ……Inviting the progressives, the greens, the environmentalists…. Not just for now, but how is it going to evolve in the future. That’s would good people in the Council are trying to do. And at the same time there are deals in the background, things that will suddenly be imposed without consultation, rush jobs etc. This project probably needs years to work all this out. The money has to be spent by 2024!

"Lost", by David Wagoner

IN case I find myself lost in the forest at the Lucid Art Foundation!

Lost

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven,
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

From, Travelling Light, Collected and New Poems, 1999

Zen and Art

”…There is no conflict between all that and artistic endeavor (or any normal activity, for that matter). Engagement with the 10,000 things - tasting so-called form with one's whole body-mind in the play of kokyu, ma-ai, and kiai (time, space, energy) - is itself the path of integrating and embodying awakening, realizing the inseparability and seamless suchness of the three times, all space, all of the serial occurrences that we call "things", and sealing one's awakening as genuine realization.

Naturally one should sit, and a great deal, with the teacher's guidance. But then artistic endeavor is an ideal activity, or should be, to integrate what one has cultivated in sitting. Viewed correctly, there is no conflict at all. In fact, what we call great art from a Zen standpoint arises from precisely this kind of approach: it requires not only technical mastery, but becomes an expression through media of the awakened state of the artist. It thus has the power to affect others, and in some cases even to cause something of that recognition to arise within them when they encounter the art. That, in a nutshell, describes what is really meant by "Zen art": it is not a genre or style, it is enlightened activity.”

Meido Moore, Rinzai Zen Discussion, 11/11/22

A very helpful review of my work

Below is a review of my work which I found very insightful, and helpful — it will help me articulate what my work is about. It was written by Sylvie Lloyd, who is doing a Foundation in Art at Leeds College of Art.

“Churchill says she works inspired by "syntropy rather than entropy", meaning a system of bringing things together rather than the ideas of randomness often examined.

Her work has a very meditative, considered atmosphere which really creates a calming feeling and a beautiful visual effect. The way she defines and depicts the patterns of the water in such a striking way while still making it look so fluid is really inspiring. The dark, bold, graphic lines manage to create such a soothing look in an entire piece. This really helped me consider how to make the glyphs bold and simplistic but still have a watery, meditative effect.

She describes her work as "focusing not on the unknown, but on what is most alive". I think this sets her apart from a lot of other artists, while a lot of people tackle the void of what cannot be expressed or understood, she works from what is present in every force around us. It reads in how her work is so simple and unpretentious but so beautiful and natural to the living experience. Meditation, to me, has a similar feeling and seeks to invoke this idea of 'what is most alive', so I was really eager to reference this atmosphere in my work.

Churchill has said before that what she is doing in her work is "Learning water script". This, to me, is a really beautiful concept. The idea that there is a language and a script, an alphabet, to be found and learned in water gave me lots to work on for the glyphical alphabet I was drawing out of my action.”

It’s important to me to know that my work has an impact on people — a positive one. It’s often hard to know.

am particularly pleased that she picked up on the focus on “what is most alive”. The energy all around us, within us, within all things. It is a mystery but very close at hand.

I haven’t used rain water in my paintings yet, but I certainly will! It’s a lovely idea. So soft and natural.

October gold

The Religion of Emergence

The religion of emergence is only just ….emerging! Says Integralist Jeff Salzman in “This Week in the News” — On Yuval Havari’s “Direction of History” and David Brooks’ “Century of the Strongman”.

“In mainstream culture, materialism and some psychology is all you have to work with.”

Let’s work with more than that!

Awareness before thought that comes from the stages before self-consciousness….

‘Science reveals to that that 13.8 billion years ago something came out of nothing, more came out of less. In terms of goodness, truth and beauty … Culminating in us, this moment — there’s a religion in there somewhere!”

Manifesto!

The words in bold were spoken during a dialogue between Hester Reeve, Emma Cocker, Jessica Ball and myself during a Bohm-style dialogue as part of the series Beyond Boh, Science Order and Creativity Part 2: Contemplation and Creativity, : Creativity and the Artist.

Creativity/art as a force: Like

• a lightning bolt -- fierce and beautiful

• the arising of morning dew -- intimate and soft

• natural

• an art movement inspired by syntropy* rather than entropy

Focussing not on the unknown, but on what is most alive.....

• no more random roaming in the Void!

• Sensing messages from the vast, empty, full and alive spaces

• Pulling down the future

• working in the proximate world spaces

A Sensing instrument amongst other sensing instruments

• Artists must do the individual work to awaken as sensing instruments

• and come together with others some of whom may be doing the same work -- or not......
  no longer individual self expression

• sensing what needs to happen.....

Gordon Onslow Ford

I am so happy to have “found” the artist Gordon Onslow Ford. A not well-known British artist, born 1912, died 2003.

The following are notes from his nterview with Lyn Kienhotz for the Metropolitan Arts Commission in 2002. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dMcpzgbR-E)

He was invited to join the Surrealists in Paris with Robert Matte. “We weren’t very good but we were original.” He resigned from the Surrealists “he “didn’t have time to engage in politics…. I was interested in investigating the unconscious.” What’s original, what hasn’t been seen been seen before comes from the unconscious, the spirit.”

He moved to the US and joined Wolfgang Paalen and the Dynaton group. “We wanted to get to them (the inner worlds) directly. We were continuing surrealism on a deeper level. Dynaton was the first step towards the exploration of the inner worlds”

LK asks “Were there any other artists working at the time in a similar way?”

GOF :”Absolutely not.”

LK “Have there been any since?”

GOF: “We were ahead of out time….Probably the influence is just starting now. It’s a great sadness, we didn’t have many friends…”

He and his wife moved to near San Francisco (near Inverness, Point Reyes). San Francisco is on the Pacific Coast and interested in the “Orient”. Spiritual masters from Inda, China and Japan were coming over. He was introduced to Vedanta and “for the first time I was able to say something of what I was doing. Before that I was speechless, as most people are about the spirit.”

He studied Daoism. Then he met Zen Master Hodo Tobase who was “one of the most powerful influences on my life. He was a very simple man — and he’d got it. Some people have got it and some people haven’t. We had a very profound relationship. I had a transmission into the spirit of Zen through calligraphy and just being with Tobase….

I worked like a beaver for 5 years at calligraphy. That is the basis of my art.

It took 14 years to get the line, circle, dot — the deepest language of the spirit. “

Asked about the future…

“Art is going to have a greater impact than it ever has before, because the religions are all in trouble in one way or another and the question of the inner worlds is going to get to the spiritual aspect of the cosmos directly…. I think we must form a closer relation to nature and the spirit of the cosmos. You don’t want to be encumbered with what you know. You’ve got to let the forces of creation work through you. Which means to have an open mind.”

Take the Virtual Tour

This is what the who exhibition looks like. We are all pleased to see how well it has all come together.

Click on the link below.

https://app.cloudpano.com/tours/JSOR7loHeD

Finally installed!

So pleased this piece has finally been installed and is doing its thing up there in Stockton on Tees — radiating light out into the rather soulless retail area with its many empty shops. Together with the work of 12 other artists all with the same intention.

Finally arrived.

A silent visitation.

Precious human life.

The piece comes with this poem:

Signs of Life

translucent structure, living entities,

Delicate yet resilient, Lit from within.

Shoals, swarms, flocks, communities….

Gathering

In intimate proximity,

Distinct and intermingling.

As daylight fades, a soft glow.

As darkness deepens, their light grows stronger,

As does their quiet invitation

To stand together, Holding fast.

Light : Space

After several weeks of preparation, by piece “Sings of Life” is now being installed in Stockton-on-Tees, part of the Light : Space Light Trail curated by Wild Vision Collective. Because of lock-down I am not travelling there to install it myself, but rather entrusitng it to a young woman called Rachel Anderson, who is setting it up at this moment. I spectacularly underestimated the amount of time it would take to set up. The drafting film curls are not performing as I hoped. I rolled them tightly to send to Stockton — too tightly. Instead of being a matter of just placing them on the base layer paper, Rachel is having to uncurl and stick each one — and there are over 200 of them! The miraculous thing is that the rather arbitrary length of 7.25 metres of base layer drawing was exactly right. It fits the window space perfectly! See next blog for the complete instaliation.

My allocated space below. Glad to see it is blue — and low. Will suit my very low lying work well.

Ice

February’s sub temperatures. Thrill of ice.

Hokkusai's Song by Roger Keys

Hokkusai's Song by Roger Keyes

Hokusai says look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing

He says look forward to getting old.

He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are.

He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,

every one of us is ancient

every one of us has a body.

He says every one of us is frightened.

He says every one of us has to find

a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive —

shells, buildings, people, fish,

mountains, trees, wood is alive.

Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,

or write books. It doesn’t matter

if you saw wood, or catch fish.

It doesn’t matter if you sit at home

and stare at the ants on your veranda

or the shadows of the trees

and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength

is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

by Roger Keyes