We are counting down to Christmas, and as it has been a while since the last missive, I thought the winter solstice was worthy of celebrating. We are now on the turn to more brightness in the day than not.

Harriet Porter Lengthening Day Oil on Canvas 63 x 63 cm.

However, as Wendell Berry sagely reminds us:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.
– To know the dark by Wendell Berry

Beth Carter Theseus with Candle Bronze Ed. of 10 45 x 23 x 21 cm.

Bath at night is magical, the Abbey lit up in the mist and cold air.
Christmas brings to mind churches lit up by candle-light.

I was like sculpture,
forgetting or, perhaps, remembering
everything. Red wings in the snow,
red thoughts ablaze in the war
I was having with myself again.
Everything I hate about the world
I hate about myself, even now
writing as if this were a law
of nature. Say there were deer
fleet in the snow, walking out
the cold, and more gingkoes
bare in the beggar’s grove. Say
I was not the only one who saw
or heard the trees, their diffidence
greater than my noise. Perhaps
the future is a tiny flame
I’ll nick from a candle. First, I’m burning.
Then, numb. Why must every winter
grow colder, and more sure?

From The World by Jennifer Chang

Atsuko Fujii Tomoshibi in White Egg Tempera on Board 36 x 30 cm.

On clear winter nights, with their stippled stars I think of Mary Oliver’s poem Starlings in Winter.

Quiet, awestruck by nature:

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theatre of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Atsuko Fujii Sagi Egg Tempera on Board 30 x 24 cm.

And finally……

Andrew Crocker All is not Everything Oil on Board 78 x 61 cm.

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

-from James Joyce The Dead

We hope to be going to London Art Fair in mid January, where we will have new work by Andrew Crocker, Nathan Ford, Helen Simmonds, Anna Gillespie, Akiko Hirai, plus some selected pieces by Paul Mount.
In late February we will have the latest collection from Adam Buick and paintings by Stewart Edmondson. New Sculptures by Anna Gillespie will be on show later in spring, plus paintings by Harriet Porter.
We have a lot to look forward to !!

Thank you for reading, for getting in contact, for visiting and supporting the gallery during 2021. I am very grateful for all of it.

Best wishes,

Aidan

Beaux Arts Bath