A high blue day, a tiny wildflower

Words make pictures. Pictures make words

Sheltering from the wind at the Broch of Borwick

Summer in Orkney is all too brief, and, this year certainly, fine days have to be seized upon and enjoyed for the rarity they are. So I have been glad this week to have the excuse of a visiting friend, and old art school chum, to down tools and get outside whenever we saw a glimpse of sunshine.

If we hadn’t gone for an impromptu walk one bright, windy afternoon we’d never have come across this beautiful, tiny and extremely rare wildflower primula scotica, just a few millimetres across, gleaming like a bright jewel in the close-cropped salt-blasted grass near the cliffs of Yesnaby. I had read about these rare plants, found only in Orkney and a few places in the far north of Scotland, but I’d never seen one in the flesh before.

Primula Scotica

We fell upon our knees like supplicants before it, marvelling at the intense colour of its tiny blooms, and its tenacity, growing on a wind-scoured headland in the face of the Atlantic storms. Was the colour pink or magenta, we wondered?

Far below us, the sea was glittering in the clear summer light of these latitudes, and we tried to find the right word for the very specific Orkney summer light: sharp? crisp? effervescent? The high blue sky above us was streaked with mares’ tails. What was that blue? Cobalt? Cerulean?

A high blue day in Orkney

I imagine it was a day like this one, on another island south and west of here, that the poet Kennet White wrote of:

A HIGH BLUE DAY ON SCALPAY

this is the summit of contemplation, and

      no art can touch it

blue, so blue, the far-out archipelago

      and the sea shimmering, shimmering

no art can touch it, the mind can only

      try to become attuned to it

to become quiet and space itself out, to

      become open and still, unworlded

knowing itself in the diamond country, in

      the ultimate unlettered light.

Kenneth White

from Open World, Collected Poems 1960-2000 (Polygon)

White’s light may be ‘unlettered’ but it’s his letters, gathered into words, that capture and share his wordless experience. I can see that ‘high blue day’. I know that wind-filled light, that shimmering sea. My friend and I, casting around for the right words on that windy clifftop, testing and weighing them against the light, the colours, the moment, could feel their approximation, their insufficiency. But our experience of the moment was enriched and deepened by the attempt to find the words to share it.

Seeing begets speaking and speaking helps us see. Good words make pictures in the mind. Writing can be as visual as painting.

Calling all visual artists! Get ready to apply for your next opportunity in this free online session

Making a career as a visual artist involves words. A lot of words. Let’s work together to build a habit of writing, and to find the right words to help people see our art.

Get that next application out the door. Bring an opportunity you want to apply for. Share the URL so we can view the application details. Let’s workshop it together.

You’ll leave with a checklist of exactly what you need and when, so you’re ready to get that application out and move right onto the next one….and the next… and the next.

The Life Raft

Our regular weekly co-working session, The Life Raft will launch as usual on Wednesday at 3pm (UK time). We say hello, say what we’ll be working on, then leave our cameras on and work together in companionship for an hour. That’s it! It’s a repeating Zoom meeting so the link is always the same. Bookmark it and set a reminder to join us!

and if you can’t make it or missed last week here’s the replay:

And here’s the link to our subscriber chat, where you can share images and keep us in touch with your projects between live sessions

Until next week!

– Sam