Studio Drifts
Writing from the edges of an ecological arts practice.
By Alisoun Neville
Studio Drifts Newsletter - first peek at the writing, plus news from my studio, new work, offers and invitations, and what's on the making table.
Step into the threshold. I will meet you.
To create is to speak with the unfolding processes and mysteries of the natural world and — at its best — to allow awe to catch the breath and expand awareness.
Step into this threshold, where wildness stirs and boundaries blur.
Live Differently — Touch the Algae
Algae, or seaweed, is other to me, on my skin, under my skin, its filaments like fascia stretching and moist. I don’t know yet if I want it inside, if it will wrap like tentacles around the tunnels that carry oxygenated blood, squeezing tighter than my own arterial walls, constricting movement, holding. Or if it will travel upwards, through the neck and throat, lymph passages and to the back of my eyes, blinding me to my own path, offering darkness, mystery, and the chance of a fatal sting.
Creative Time - Do art and attention change the way I experience time?
This is not about accuracy. It is about immersion. Painting stretches time by slowing it down, allowing perception to deepen through presence and repeated looking. It becomes a way of inhabiting the place I am painting rather than extracting a moment from it. This is especially true when working from plein air, but I experience it even when that presence is mediated through a photograph I have taken myself.
What is a season?
I have patiently waited for the second flowering to pick some large-leaf yellow bush pea and place it in a vase. I pay attention now to patterns — first the white flowers, then jasmine and grevillea, followed by three weeks of three types of native peas — yellow, red, and purple. The red one, a delicate and local ground creeper, is my favourite; it lasts the longest, and is a namesake for my dog. I wished I had time to pick Indigofera Australis while it was flowering, and time for my lilac-flower-loving friend to visit so we could use its dye together.
Reflections
Reflection doesn’t stay still. It is light bending back to the eye, thought turning inward — a world seen twice: once in glint or flicker. Across these works, it moves through different forms: the gleam on water or metal, the quiet act of looking — and being looked at — the way an image meets its double and dissolves. Reflection resists definition, changing with each surface it meets.