Rosslynd Piggott

 

vanishing evanescence: on the recent painting of rosslynd piggott

vanishing evanescence fugitive diminishing scents bulbs gardens shiny leafy petals that define new growth and then there’s the ground that defines it arranges it and nourishes the rhizome that gives it life like a musicality that embraces silence as its most affirming generator and after all isn’t the dune the most diffused of waves? our atomized self continues to resist the many truths revealed by the all-seeing eye of the painter as we scan the horizon for news of home but where is it if not in the air that enters our lungs at this very instant lovingly collected in phials to underline the foolishness of our ardour for place and time when it’s everywhere that we reside all at once and touch? we have forgotten haven’t we during those four minutes and thirty-three seconds how ravishingly the world begins to pour into our ears at first a distant hum and then ending as a sublime crescendo of a dense is-ness as does looking (and seeing; they are not the same are they?) and looking again at the painter’s astonishingly feathered touch reward our willingness to empty screeching minds and stand close up to the surface of this alternate world to witness its adagio transformation into the vaporetto’s vapour there above the turneresque sky paralleling death and finality but not yet not quite yet though clearly whatever the substance of this life is diminishes even as we stand as still as we can in front of the mirror the glass the island that is each self un-gloving the hand pouring itself into this other glass fluted in the most musical of shapes and magnolia-like reduced to its own essence once more and then we begin again and again and again deeper into the bark to touch at least once the bleeding sap we call home and then suddenly i turn and im on the top floor of twosixeight brunswick street with light pouring from the walls and translucently from the floor though blinds are drawn tight at the far end of the odyssey room how can this be and turning again to face the joycean garden i traversed it seems only a minute ago the very same light now streams towards me from its origin on the other side of the multicoloured hedges inside the painted panel from whatever it is that so glows beyond it then just as suddenly it’s night-time once more and steps ring deep inside kaleidoscopic crystal windows what can be remembered (no - what can be held inside oneself) at this moment is the scent of human that pervades the life of the painter and intoxicates the living canvas with a musicality that cannot bear to be heard nor sounded as if the painter must live inside her museum of silence signaling to us from the other side to still the torrent of blandness to praise instead the opacity that stillness and blindness brings beseeching whomever might see to look again with all their might so that once more the scented outline of the horizon might be known in the end the only friend we have ever had the only one.

 

domenico de clario

october 2014