#tracesdutemps

[shuilynwhite]

The Prince of Tides (2022) There are certain distances that remain. Distances that cannot be crossed, erased, shortened, or even avoided. There is a measure in our minds that knows distance. The distance of centimeters and inches to kilometers and miles. The distance of time. One second, one minute, one hour. The distance of weeks to months and months to years. And then there’s the distance between breathes, between thoughts, between glances, between words, between one heartbeat and the next. The language of distances, measured and metered. Cell deep. What part of the body does not understand distance in all its nuances? Distances opening, distances closing. Danger, intimacy. Chasms and hairline fractures. It’s possible to know them all and still be caught by surprise. By the one that cannot be crossed. The distance that is to walk in place, in the same moment, from where there’s no going. The distance of a heart from chamber to chamber, wall to wall. I have walked my heart. And all I have gained with the passage of time is not distance. Time will take me no where, and the geographical miles keep me suspended in an illusory dance. The dance of distances. The distance between one body and the next. And the future into which we cannot step alone. Unique hand-finished monotype with mixed media on Hahnemühle 300gsm etching paper 78 x 104cm Private Collection #monotypie #monotype #printart #printmaker #sketch #printmaking #painter #painting #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #artwork #espacetemps #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #dessincontemporain #estampecontemporaine #VAAWorkingArtist #VisualArtistsAssociation #VAAartist #VAACreativeHabits #draw #drawing #sketchbook #artcollector https://www.instagram.com/p/CmB-uduq-PV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shuilynwhite]

Maelstrom (2022) This day, arriving as it does every October, is the end. The end of the year. It’s the day all the other days are about arriving at, it’s the getting to this day. And after this day, it all starts over again. Another year, with its own irreducible remorselessness. Life and livving. And how we die. For the dying, and for death’s witnesses, for those that hold the hands that go slack, or listen to the breathe that ceases; for those who catch the sudden stilling of the chest, or the instant the eyes fade out, there is no way back into the world. There’s a crossing over into another kind of life, at times unfathomable; at times unimaginable. Some days I surprise myself by humming. Whistling even. By the unthought escape of laughter. Because here, joy is noted. Time surprises me most of all in the way it keeps on passing, accumulating into strange anniversaries that are not celebrations, but mark some stage in a journey for which there are no maps, no signposts, no compasses. Journeys that have a way of arriving back on themselves, so that there is only this crossing at this rubicon, again. Ways and days convoluted, wound round and round, so this moment remains. Life and living. And how we die. Always this. At the beginning of another year. Unique hand-finished monotype with collage Plate 85x71cm Paper94x85cm #monotypie #monotype #printart #printmaker #sketch #printmaking #painter #painting #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #collage #artwatchers #espacetemps #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #zenart #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #estampe #hahnemühlepaper #living https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj79gkHKKEM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shuilynwhite]

Archipelago (2022) The tide is low this morning and already the day slides out. The rubbish collection - paper and organic waste today - is later than usual, the trolley stopping quietly by the gate and then trundling off again. The conveyor belt of tourists has yet to stutter to a start, and the workmen fixing the altana next door are sawing wood, languidly. Life is tidal here in the lagoon city. The morning is muted. The light carries a winter slant, and the air is cool. I note, how my senses are attuned: each morning smells different. Sounds different too. The water tunes everything as it moves: the rhythm of energies, the rhythm of thoughts, the movement of limbs and bodies; the weight of the air, the lightness of light, the stretch of sound - all drifting in and out on the tide. I have become a tidal creature, rising and falling. Falling and rising. Quietly adrift. There is no real destination in this place of tides; this archipelago that constantly moves and shifts. Its places are simply arrived at and then, departed from, each step dropping into light then shade, momentarily caught in a glimmer of reflection. Quietly adrift. Walking along the canals, the other side accompanies - inaccessible yet so near. Sometimes it is possible to cross over, and often it is not. For some canals bear no bridges. The calle turns away and there is no where to go but on. In this tidal life, there’s an acceptance of the continuity in ebb and flow as the tide turns and draws itself out and away. Resistance relinquished. I cannot, it seems, control the tides. I cross over, without really registering, into another island and await a different kind of return among the familiar and the unknown. Hand-finished unique monotype and mixed media on Hahnemühle 300gsm paper 79x94cm #monotypie #monotype #printart #printmaker #sketch #printmaking #painter #painting #mixedmediaart #mixedmediaartist #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #collage #espacetemps #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #zenart #time #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #dessincontemporain #estampecontemporaine #hahnemühlepaper #VAAWorkingArtist #VisualArtistsAssociation #VAAartist https://www.instagram.com/p/CjaC9ccKUuW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shuilynwhite]

Another Life Reimagined (2022) There is a question I have been asking myself, as I rise to meet the morning and take those first hesitant steps into a new day in a new place. Why leave all that is is known and home and comfortable to be in a foreign city? And the answer is that life can change everything at once so that what was known becomes unknown, a home ceases to be home and the comfortable no longer comforts. It is easier to be a stranger in a foreign city than a stranger at home. Memories escape me here; the streets hold no familiar ghosts; no stories from my past, crowded as they are with the past lives of others. And there is comfort in this. Comfort in the unknown corner, the street whose name I will forget, the shop I will never find again. Comfort in the kindness of strangers and strangeness, in the sounds of words to which I can attach no meaning, weaving the endless stories of the timeless past. In a city of ghosts, I am not haunted. Here, I can lay my ghosts down. I can perhaps return to this other life, in the place I call home, lighter. In the unknown is a map of the heart. The undiscoverable heart. The heart that endures even as the world around stutters and stops. In this heart is another self, a half-recognised shadow of someone once known in a half-remembered dream. It feels real enough, this. I want to fall in love. Fall in love with life again. Without going, there’s no returning. Hand-finished unique monotype on Hahnemühle etching paper 300gsm - Paper 78cm x 106 cm. #monotypie #monotype #printmaker #printmaking #painter #mixedmediaart #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #draw #drawing #sketchbook #sketch #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #zenart #time #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #estampecontemporaine #hahnemühlepaper #vaaworkingartist #visualartistsassociation #vaaartist #vaacreativehabits https://www.instagram.com/p/CiFmb7KKTGk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shuilynwhite]

In a Parallel Universe (2022) I am holding my world tightly. Too tightly. I am afraid I will suffocate it. The birds chattering at the water bottle hanging from the tree outside the kitchen window; the bricks of the house; the frangipani blossoms scattered by the wind; the avocado trees laden with fruit; the motley collection of rescued succulents; the chilli plant bursting red; the orchids ready to bloom on the window sill. I am holding all this dear. The fat cat lounging in the morning’s sunspot; the sofa with a torn corner; the carpet going threadbare and bleached of colour where the sun catches it at noon; the table under which a dog once slept. The books on the shelves, organized by themes and love, dog-ear resistant, friendly, spines unbroken, waiting to be read and re-read. I could go on, one chipped mug at a time; an inventory of life’s solitudes, as gently the shadows rise and fall, and the world shrugs and shifts. I see it all in its fragility, its uncertainties. And look, I am holding on. Tightly. Tightly. As it slips away…into another season. - Hand-finished unique monotype with mixed media, drawing, and collage on Fabriano Rosapina paper 70x110cm - #monotypie #montype #printart #printmaker #printmaking #painter #painting #mixedmediaart #mixedmediaartist #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #collage #espacetemps #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #time #seasons #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #dessincontemporain #estampecontemporaine #draw #drawing #VAAWorkingArtist #fabrianopaper #marcelproust https://www.instagram.com/p/CgrAjvMqff5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shuilynwhite]

Whispers from the Surface (2022) A heart can only take so much loss. It sinks as a stone sinks with the body in a doorway, fully dressed, boots on and the dog waiting by its side. Or with the coat on a grass verge, gathered into itself, draped into a human form, sagging beneath its own weight, indifferent to the sun blue sky. Or with the glare of a bare foot emerging from beneath the smoothed edges of a skirt. The foot of a woman, her face turned away and disappearing out of view. The heart sinks into the stillness of the moment irretrievably lost. The moment of the body by the bicycle, by the suitcase, by the dog - all held close, held dear. There are no strangers here. It’s a possibility that the body in the doorway will get up and dust itself off; the other will get back onto the bicycle, pedal away; and the foot will find its shoe. But the moment has passed. Irretrievably. Into stillness. Like a stone. - Hand-finished unique monotype with mixed media and collage on Hahnemühle cotton etching paper 78x106xm - on show at RK Contemporary in Breathe Into, Blow Upon. #monotypie #montype #printart #printmaker #printmaking #painter #painting #mixedmediaart #mixedmediaartist #abstractart #atelier #art #artist #warphotography #collageart #arte #espacetemps #tracesdutemps #abtractworld #dualité #dualityoflife #contemporaryprint #artonpaper #journal #notebook #dessincontemporain #estampecontemporaine #hahnemühlepaper https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf6KtruKLkG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=