The movement that light is
comes out of the sun
Hello Friends
While the rest of the country bakes in a Bank holiday heatwave, I pulled open the curtains first thing this morning to a soft grey drizzle. The shrubs in the garden, at last greening up after a slow, cold Spring, were jostling in a brisk westerly, so I reached for my warm sweater and waterproof jacket before heading out to feed the hens. They were up, but sleepy, sitting together quietly, like a neat row of those padded, hen-shaped tea cosies, as they waited for their breakfast. I’d had to chivvy them into bed last night. With sunset coming at 10pm, the lingering light keeps them awake late. Me too, girls, me too.
The Sun rises noticeably earlier each morning, already before 4.30am. I’ve been waking early, a mix of insomnia and daylight creeping round the edge of the curtains to rouse me despite my sleep mask. In fact, it doesn’t really get dark, won’t now for several weeks. Sleeplessness is a feature of this season in Orkney, as our circadian rhythms become confused by the endless day. Like the hens, I’m up and about early, if a little glassy-eyed, after just a few hours of restless sleep.
To live at this latitude is an immersion in this seasonal rhythm of light and dark. Our seasons are not demarcated by hot and cold, or wet and dry. Our winters are cool and rainy and our summers are often much the same. My t-shirts last for decades, slowly going musty as they lie unworn in the drawer, while the elbows of my woollen jumpers and favorite socks need regular darning.
But the summer sky is a bowl of light from horizon to horizon, even today, when it glimmers with a diffuse and pearlescent white now that the early rain has cleared. There are no shadows. The light comes from every direction at once; the clouded sky, the gleaming water, the lively air. The low, undulating land is no more than a fine sliver of soft green suspended between the huge white sky and the glimmering expanse of sea and loch. These islands, on which our busy lives unfold, seem so slight, so contingent, amidst all this singing light and air and water.
The big painting I’ve been working on has reached a moment when I think it might be finished. It’s time now to pause, live with it for a while, reflect on it. I need some distance to figure out what it’s really about, if it’s achieving what I’d hoped, or become something else, if it’s failing, or just needing a bit more work. It has, of course, evolved as it’s gone along.
When I set out, I was thinking about air and wind and light, about how they swirl about you when you stand at the top of the cliffs of the West Mainland, and how the power and scale of it all reminds me I’m no more than a small participant in the grand dance. “All One Breath” I kept thinking, a title borrowed from the poet John Burnside, that said something about the living air that moves through all things.
But as the painting has developed the Sun has become more prominent, haloed in the central panel of the triptych. So, I am thinking, maybe this is more about radiance. About the generosity of light. About veneration for the Sun that powers everything we love and know.
The Orcadian writer and film-maker Margaret Tait wrote, in a poem I love so much I have it by heart, a poem that has been running through my head in the long hours of working on this painting:
“The movement that light is Comes out of the sun And it’s so gorgeous a thing That nothing else is ever anything unless lit by it.” from "Light", Sarah Neely (ed.), Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings (Carcanet, 2012)
I am sitting with the possibility that the title of this painting lies in those few lines: “The movement that light is.”
I’m away for a few days, leaving the coolness of Orkney for sultry London. After such an intensive burst of work on a single painting it wll be good to step away for a few days. It’s time to air out some of those musty t-shirts. I will encounter a very different Sun in the south, a hot one!
Which means that…
Apologies: The Life Raft will not be launching this week.
I’m sorry I forgot to mention it to everyone on last week’s session. By Wednesday afternoon I will be sweltering in central London in my twenty-year-old t-shirt. Last last week’s recording is available in the paid subscriber chat, to keep you company while I’m away!
Like you, I am waking up in much the same way in my corner of Canada. Having been starved of sun light for the past too many months the morning light and quiet feels like a balm for this tired old gal. As does the glimpse of your works progress. How do you not stop at early stages and decide its beautiful and perfect? They appear that way to me. I suppose it helps to have no preconceived notions of what it wants to be. Thank you for the morning photos, art and stories of chickens and darned elbows. Made my heart happy.
Thank you for this beautiful observation and delightful poem.