Mirror Land:
Response to Gaffney's 'The Good, The bad and The Ugly' sculpture.

Lone girl at an Irish Zoo, how she has set herself apart.
She is on a table which rests on a mirror.

Claude Glass, a Black Mirror, used for painting landscapes in the 18th C.
Are the landscapes memory landscapes?
Or Ingold Taskscapes?
1965 treetop canopy, a park with a cenotaph.
A lot of sky, populated by trees.

This hand mirror is Cleopatra’s Obsidian
highly polished mirror.

Not a true reflector
black stone of magnetic depth
A wonder.

The magnetic depth of prismatic black flecked with quartz.
The contemplative depth is much more about soul space.
A  Psychological fingerprint.

Because it is not a true reflection
It gives space for infinity
Mirror
To look in it
is to gaze on the infinite, the sublime.
Not Newman’s sublime
although I think I understand the Abstract Expressionism’s love of black.
Ad Reinhardt, Malevich, Rauschenberg and its opposite Robert Ryman’s white,
or the gold infinity of Agnes Martin.
The infinite and the sublime ecstasy.

It’s the Milky Way,
it’s a bee collecting nectar,
it’s a smile from an old man,
and it’s the unfathomable depths of the oceans.

The mirror is flat looking up like Tyrell’s Deer Shelter,
it is an aperture,
a gateway
glimpse of mirror world
Like Alice, is everything back to front and upside-down in the mirror?

mystery, wonder, awe.
The mirror is the place where I can be Mary Oliver wild.
Mirror world of my studio allows me a freedom of mind,
a clarity, an acuity, a sharpness and transparency of soul
not found elsewhere.

Mirror studio is completely absorbing
and hours fly by in this head space,
this critical thinking space,
this doing and being space.
In here there is no judgement.
I make, I paint, I fly, I listen to me, I draw, I dream, I plan.

Slow, slow crafting,
so slow sometimes things never get finished
it’s ok to have unfinished projects in the studio.

The light
Mirror light of gesso on icon boards.
The hand mirror
Of the uncreated light of the universe before the sun and the moon
The uncreated light full of prismatic colour
and what would my body look like in uncreated light?

my patterns and repetitions,
embodied being, breathing, repetition, 
heart beat repetition, 
bones in my body repetition, 
vessels of blood repetition, 
peat like tissue structures pulsing, 
beating
repetition.

And when I close my eyes the patterns of my iris reflected on the inside of my eyes
Patterns and veins red and black.

being alone as a child in my head 
but not lonely,
that’s the mirror
land of the studio.


image: Egyptian hand mirror in gold foil, silver, glass, alabaster, obsidian, porphyritic diorite – ca. 1479-1425 B.C. Thebes. https://chateaustyle.me/2015/02/17/mirror-mirror/

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