#hebrew character

first moth of the year!!! inaturalist says that its a hebrew character, but i can confirm they are a friend :)

Early Grey: watercolour 61x46cm

 The natural world has offered up so much material to inspire me through my life. And though elements from nature have been been co-opted for incidental effect, I have spurned almost all of it as central source material for my own art. The spotlight over my stage has been shone instead on the human figure and its psychological condition. I have seen the work of too many artists who have invested their entire lives and artistic skill sets into almost perfect captures of flora and fauna that I would be unable to satisfactorily compete. Does the world need yet another merely competent picture of a Barn Owl? 

My partner Carole bought me a very special birthday present in 2017. It was an actinic light trap for attracting moths. She had picked up on my casual comments about wanting to know which of these creatures was sharing our local environment with us after dark. We had seen some wonderful day flyers; Humminbird Hawkmoths, Garden Tigers, Sallows and had disturbed beautiful heralds [looking like little battle shields] in our workshop outbuildings. This trap allowed us to view the night flyers at close quarters.  The light attracts then; they trip and doze.. I photograph  and record their numbers. [an July example] The captives are unharmed  by the following dusk. They take to the wing again, leaving the box with its egg cartoons [a traditional material used to accommodate them in their post-luminary state]  completely empty by the following morning…

 Lepidopterology presented an alluring aspect of nature to which, until recently, I had only paid casual attention. It offered a striking opportunity to visualise two different preoccupations simultaneously. 

1 The nature of obsession

Obsession: watercolour 61x43cm

obsession    /əbˈsɛʃ(ə)n/   noun: obsession fixation, ruling/consuming passion, passion, mania, idée fixe, compulsion. 

Spectacle: watercolour 61x43cm

 ’Spectacle’ is one of an ongoing series of watercolours which reflect the development of and total immersion in one’s personal preoccupations.  A visual encapsulation on the nature of obsession to the exclusion of all other interests and responsibilities; pushed to the point where the subject and the self merge. The degree of assimilation varies from composition to composition, from almost full portrait,

the Small Welsh Quaker: watercolour, 61x43cm

– to just a partially occluded eye within the object of desire.. pulled deeper into the fabric of the idée fixe.

Faded Flyer: 30x43cm

2 Hiding within Plain View

Beneath the Arches: 43x30cm

crypsis   /ˈkrip-səs   noun: the ability of an organism to conceal itself especially from a predator by having a colour, pattern, and shape that allows it to blend into the surrounding environment

Though 2019 marks the 70th anniversary year of the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, it’s central concept remains, ominously, as relevant as ever. How is the artist/ dissident to express unpalatable truths and criticisms of contemporary society and the state apparatus  whilst still being able to function as one of its citizens; free from official persecution?  When I first read this masterwork, it did seem as if western society at least, had insured itself against the risks headlined through its pages. Now it seems that perverse humanity has collectively snatched defeat from the jaws of what was perhaps in retrospect a mirage of victory. My own body of work since the turn of the Century  has alluded to different facets of the struggle for the individual voice to be heard within an unsympathetic kultur.

stills from the film ‘Tatsuko’ 44minutes, B&W

Tatsuko [film details] investigated the strategies required to make a life while living in secret in a foreign environment with potentially hostile forces at close quarters.

the ‘Smethwick Twins’: oil on canvas from the series, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’

‘Smoke and Mirrors’ depicted visual deceits employed to create and protect ‘second lives’.

Landscapes of Betrayal; Do it to Julia: graphite on paper  61x86cm

“Do it to Julia’ echoed the activities of George Orwell’s everyman and reluctant hero Winston Smith in attempting to evade detection by making the narrator into an anamorphic cast thrown across the paper’s surface; his words converted into a cryptograph consisting of negative spaces. Both speech and image hidden in plain sight.

This series of moth paintings is an attempt to find an imagery which might encapsulate these related concepts. To marry ideas of surreptitious discourse with techniques of crypsis

Frosted Man and [right] Underneath the Arches: both watercolour, 43x30cm

In this way, the freethinker may give voice to his or her ideas publicly, rather than in secret, by appearing to be saying one thing, but smuggling through a subtext under a surface covering to convey a quite different meaning. The visual deceptions observed in the structure, patterning and coloration present in moth families  provided me with a visual equivalent for operating under the radar; fully functioning in plain view, but hidden from all but the closest scrutiny. An inversion on the idea of sleight of hand; this time, not by leading the eye away from the real subject, but rather fooling it into misreading evidence presented directly to the eye.

Self in Purple: watercolour 61x43cm

22/08/2019-Sectaceous Hebrew Character moth (first picture in this photoset) and 23/08/2019-Lakeside walk tonight

A very nice moth to see in my room. I have spotted a good few moths this year actually and appreciated them nicely. They are still something I require much more learning on though so thanks to a kind Twitter follower for identifying for me. 

Tonight I did an after work walk over Lakeside as like I said on Twitter I did last night when I had a nice walk to myself really taking in nature and feeling very calm. It was to see the red leaves shown tonight in the fifth picture in this photoset which I noticed last night, leaves I always seem to photograph every year so nice to see them at the start of the season sort of. I like the mix of red and green as a contrast between summer and autumn on the tree and it was just too hot and glorious a night not to do this walk with the weather really hotting up again. I liked taking the third, fourth and sixth pictures in this photoset of this beautiful and precious area for me. 

On the way to Lakeside I was delighted to spot the Sparrowhawk flying over in the second picture in this photoset. It was nice to have seen this as well as Peregrine Falcon a young one at Winchester Cathedral this lunch time like I did seeing them both a few weeks ago on a day. The picture was difficult with it high up and flying right into a bright sun on its natural circle round that I could not directly look at obviously. So the quality is way less than the one I took by Fishlake Meadows in April. But Sparrowhawks over Eastleigh are something so important to my hobby. As the urban bird of prey they were the first I saw of raptors in the wild by Grantham Green in 2007 and birds of prey are one of my favourite families of birds. The Sparrowhawk was my first bird of prey seen in 2019 too and its probably been my best year for them following a strong 2018 for them for me well. I also had that stunning moment at my Dad’s house/our old family home when a female darted past me when I was on the trampoline after a Blackbird as a kid. So it brought back great memories. 

It was nice to see the meadows looking busier with butterflies after naturally a quiet few nights for them as I cut through to get home from work with the temperature dropping a bit lately and the season coming to an end a little. It showed just how hot it was though that the usually never landing Small and Large White were landed on the ragwort and other plants soaking up the sun and I enjoyed seeing them. 

As I looked over the lake in the last picture I took I enjoyed brilliant moments with the Great Crested Grebes and got another flashback to my early birdwatching as this bird was one of the first real amazing moments in my hobby. I thought this would be the perfect night to see a Kingfisher too and as I hang on to watch the Great Crested Grebes sure enough I did see a Kingfisher dart across the lake which was so great to see. A great start to another bank holiday which could be quite a memorable one, I hope you all have a good one. 

I am a wavering moth, a dusty Hebrew character, inky like my name.

I am lost in the night, fluttering and in flames but drawn towards the light.

Feeding on fluff and shadows, I sleep among the living and wake up with the dead,

when beating hearts are unforgiving to souls that have been bled.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Image found on http://www.ukmoths.org.uk

My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie…