LIGHTNING

Storm Oil on linen 85 x 150 cm 2012

 

JOURNEY THROUGH THE COSMOS

 

Before I ramble on about lightning I will fill you in on some recent exciting events I have been to and thoroughly enjoyed. They are part of Journey Through The Cosmos a fabulous series of concerts and presentations 6-9 November here in Brisbane at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre [QPAC]. I bought my package of tickets a year ago!

 

What is Journey Through The Cosmos? It's a collaboration of science and art/music hosted by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra [QSO]. So, you ask, where's the science? Through the Queensland Government's Super Stars Fund Journey Through The Cosmos features famous physicist Prof Brian Cox. During the concert on Thursday night he gave short and fascinating insights into our solar system. The accompanying music included a new piece Voyager, a violin concerto, which was specially commissioned. The 'Super Star' composer Dario Marianelli was inspired by the spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 and their journeys through, and beyond, the solar system. And, the 'Super Star' violinist was Jack Leibeck...fantastic. Jack also played a number of pieces at Einstein's Universe which was a fabulous presentation by another physicist Prof Brian Foster from Oxford University. This is a 'gig' Jack and the Professor have previously given in other parts of the world. You can read about it on their website Einstein's Universe

 

There are still a couple of events to go. So I shall write about the whole series in my next post.

 

AND......I met Brian Cox!

 

 

LIGHTNING

 

PLANETS

There's lightning on other planets, but not all in our solar system. The planets we are sure about, apart from Earth, are Jupiter and Saturn, plus Venus. But, lightning on Venus is the most different, because it is not related to water clouds, but rather...clouds of sulphuric acid. Brian Cox, when he talked about Venus during the QSO's performance of Gustav Holtz's The Planet Suites at the Journey Through The Cosmos concert, described it as hellish. He said it did not live up to the name of Venus, normally associated with love and beauty. Just imagine what lighting generated from clouds of sulphuric acid might be like?  

 

 

Cosmic Address Oil on linen 90 x 180 cm 2013
Note the lightning bottom left!

 

 

SYMBOL

Lightning, as a symbol, is normally associated with power and might. Mythological deities who wielded bolts of lightning held enormous prestige and engendered great fear.

 

STORM SEASON

And, in Queensland we are entering Summer storm season. Mother Nature often produces spectacular shows of lightning streaking across night skies, momentarily lighting up landscape or cityscape in majestic silhouette. These storms can be really wild, noisy and not necessarily very wet! These types of storms can be very dangerous, because lightning can spark fires in dry bush and grasslands.

 

 

Night Time Electric Storm [Across The Flat Plain] Oil on linen 55 x 80 cm 2012

 

 

A STORY

And, now to a story. A week ago my 20 year old daughter went to Goondiwindi by bus. It's a five hour journey from Brisbane and she went armed with various devices to keep her occupied...oh and a book! But, after she arrived in Goondiwindi she made a few comments to me that made my heart sing. As night settled the bus was travelling through bush and the sky was dark with storm clouds. The roads are long and fairly straight, and on a bus passengers are quite high off the ground, thus allowing for a more panoramic view. So what did my daughter say?

 

My daughter said, 'Mum, I decided to just look out the windows.' 

My heart starts to flutter!
 

And then she said, 'I watched the lighting. It was so beautiful.'

 

And then she said. 'I looked around at the other passengers and they all had earphones in, and were looking at phones or their computers or iPads. Mum, they missed out on so much!'

 

Yes....I jumped up and down with excitement, with my heart singing.  

 

Regular readers will know why my heart sang....I have previously written about the literal and metaphoric importance of looking out the window. Yes, if life is largely experienced and observed via phone, computer and tv screens what happens to 'experience' if the power goes off ?

 

In my previous post called Looking Out The Windows I wrote:

I tell my children that people have to be careful not to abdicate their brains to technology because come the apocalypse [natural disaster, space debris hitting an important satellite or whatever] when GPS systems, computers etc etc stop working, people won't have the practical skills to survive...OR... even think to simply look out the windows, literally and metaphorically! I get told...Mum you're so weird...!

 

BUT, weird Mum or not, my daughter looked out the windows of the bus!!!!

...and saw beauty!

 

 

Stormy Weather - Where? Oil on linen 120 x 150 cm 2013

 

AND JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED MY EXCITING NEWS

PANDORA WEB ARCHIVE  AND MY BLOGI received an official request from the State Library of Queensland to allow PANDORA [Australia's web archive - National Library of Australia and partners] to archive my Blog...

 

YES this one you are reading now! 

 

PANDORA is an official site for archiving 'online publications and websites of lasting significance' and 'research value' in perpetuity. Check out the State Library of Queensland's selection criteria page and you will see why I am really so very happy that my eight year old Blog has been acknowledged this way. 

 

PLUS

 

OOO SYMPOSIUM 

 

 

 

 

My proposal for a paper/presentation was accepted and I am one of the speakers at:

Seeing Things: OOO Symposium For Creative Researchers

 

Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Queensland, Australia.

Thursday 20 November 8.30am  - 4.30 am

 

My topic is:

Cosmic Perspectives

 

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com

COSMIC ADDRESS

Cosmic Address oil on linen 90 x 180 cm 2013

I love the idea of a cosmic address? Astrophysicist, Prof Joel Primack, and writer, Nancy Ellen Abrams, use this inspirational coupling of words in their book The New Universe and The Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World When I read those two words pictures sprang into my head and 'Cosmic Address' above is one of them.

The notion of a cosmic address propels you to perspectives way beyond your everyday street address, to horizons that make notation of one's country even seem myopic. If we all thought of ourselves as living at a cosmic address how would Earth and humanity be viewed? Just imagine taking yourself from inside your cells to the far reaches of outer space. Imagine viewing Earth from these intimate depths to the fulsome distances of space. These kinds of perspective are potentially full of knowledge, insight and awareness...if we're game to look up from our smartphones!

COSMIC VOYAGE ZOOM-IN
The video below is from Primack and Abram's website: It uses the age-old transcultural/religious symbol of the ouroboros [snake eating its own tail] as a guage/meter, while taking the viewer on a journey through cosmic scales. Regular readers will know of my interest in the ouroboros. Indeed, it appears in my painting 'Cosmic Address' above. My previous post provides more information on the significance of the ouroboros in my work and as a symbol representing the Universe.

COSMIC TIME TOO
Not only is a cosmic address about a place within the cosmos, but also a time within Universal history. Primack and Abrams make a very incisive argument that humanity is now placed at a pivotal time...a time midway through the life of our sun, the celestial powerhouse maintaining life on Earth. At some point in a few hundred million years the sun, as it builds to its cataclysmic demise, will radiate such heat that human life on Earth will be impossible. Humanity's future is probable extinction. But, the Universe will still continue, our Universal address will still exist albeit changed, but we may not/won't be home, literally or consciously. How can humanity A: ensure that the life of future generations is not made worse by actions and decisions taken now? B: come up with plans to possibly mitigate extinction? C: take advantage of any unexpected opportunities to enhance and/or save life? D: identify risk, even a small one, to Earth and humanity, from afar or from within?

COSMIC ADDRESS Oil on linen 90 x 180 cm
I wanted to create an image that appeared to be both intimate and vast, visceral and cosmic. The ouroboros, its body painted with another age-old transcultursl/religious symbol of the tree-of-life, represents time and scale, yet its circular shape is like a portal, a womb, an eye... The ouroboros seemingly floats in an energised space, that could be outer space or the interior of life's womb. Another tree-of-life grows from an 'horizon', pulsing with life and energy, like blood or those dark forces propelling universal space. The lightning at bottom left is a conduit heralding a new landscape, one untethered from Earth, but one that looks back at the same time as observing all perspective, temporal and spatial.

In order to help us vision our cosmic address I suggest notions of landscape need to be untethered from being Earth-bound. We seem to cling to concepts of Earth-bound landscape that, in terms of geographic locale, somehow identifies who we are and where we come from...even a sense of ownership. Yet, the future is calling us to consider our 'home' and identity, to not only be derived from locales such as regions, countries, nations or continents, but also as citizens of the Universe. This kind of expanded address-vision surely must help unite humanity to work together to sustain life and the planet for near and far future generations?

Please also read more about my ouroboros painting at Snakes Eating Their Own Tails

For more on untethering landscape check out my post Untethering Landscape

Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com

STORMY WEATHER: WHERE?

 Stormy Weather: Where? Oil on linen 120 x 150 cm 2013

Recently I have been painting lightning, storms, rain...the weather. But, is it Earth's weather or is it from somewhere else? My answer; up to you! Is it literal or metaphoric weather...or both? My answer is both. 'Storms' brew within us, deep inside our emotions, our psyches. Sometimes they are small skirmishes, sometimes they are wild and apocalyptic. Storms, whether literal or not, urge...beg...for change to happen.

Here in Brisbane, late last year, we experienced some wild storms, showcasing nature's elements of wind, rain, lightning, dark clouds, hail and more. I painted a couple of paintings inspired by these stormy experiences which also triggered memories of storms across the flat black soil plain of my childhood home. Please check out STORM and NIGHT TIME ELECTRIC STORM

In more recent weeks Australia has been burning. Bush fires dot the country, threatening homes, businesses, livestock, natural flora and fauna and more. There are many reports of ferocious flames licking skies and fire fronts bellowed by hot winds. Many farmers lament the difficulties in gaining licenses to back burn abundant, but dried off, fuel across bush and grass lands. Back burning during cooler months, particularly after good wet seasons which produce glorious growth, is something farmers have historically undertaken with care. The Aborigines also back/controlled burned for eons. Check out this article and this article  as introductions to the burn off debate.

The drastic and sad thing is....a number of the recent fires have been ignited by lighting strikes. During wild and windy, but rain-less storms, lightning can easily ignite dried off vegetation and bush detritus. The ensuing change is dramatic and fierce.

STORMY WEATHER: WHERE?
I put the WHERE? in the title to provoke questions. Some may ask, 'Is the storm in Queensland?' or 'Is it a storm out west? Others may ask, 'Kathryn, what planet are you on with this one?' Yet, how many would ask questions about the psyche? What emotional 'storms' affect you as an individual? What 'storms' affect humanity as a whole? Paradigm shifting...maybe?!

I suggest that all these questions [and more] and their many answers, mediate assumed notions of what 'landscape' really is. Please check out my previous post WHEN IT RAINED ON MARS?  and UNTETHERING LANDSCAPE: REVOLUTIONARY?

In a recent conversation my brother Wilfred Brimblecombe  also suggested to me that the human body, from cells to organs, is a mass of ongoing 'storms'...impulses, surges, energy bursts, thumping and pumping...even while we sleep. Indeed, the 'cosmos' within propels us in life, in a dance with the cosmos beyond. Please check out previous post BODY AS SITE

In STORMY WEATHER: WHERE? a flash of lighting lights up a dark and turbulent night sky. The lightning strikes the ground emitting a red potency through the 'landscape'. In the distance, on the right, a strip of rain falls. This rain is red, like blood...like fire...life giving and renewing. On the left a small red tree rises from the potent vein. Regular readers will identify the tree as my much loved age-old trans-cultural/religious tree-of-life. For me this symbol 'speaks' of all life throughout all history...and that includes pre and post human history...beyond humanity's collective egocentric reach.

In the aftermath of fire, rain falls, small seedlings emerge...life.

COSMOLOGY

@ Purgatory Artspace

Exhibition 30 January - 16 February

I have created a COSMOLOGY page: It has all the details and more images 

Please check it out HERE 

My paintings for COSMOLOGY left this morning. They are on their way to Melbourne. 

Packed paintings for COSMOLOGY ready to go to Melbourne

SUMMER IN BRISBANE 

For readers who have never been to Brisbane I found this BLOG which features a post 'Sub Tropical Summer' of photographs showcasing our glorious colour, vegetation, skies and more.  

TASMANIAN HOLIDAY ANYONE?

Friends of mine own and run Bicheno By The Bay holiday resort. Bicheno was very close to the devastating fires that blazed through Tasmania last week. Thankfully the small seaside town avoided the firestorm. If you want a lovely, low key, natural, relaxed holiday think of Bicheno By The Bay. I plan to get down there sometime this summer or next. One of my children has been there twice and loves it. Below is a photo of the resort taken from the air. Looks great don't you think!!!!

Cheers,

Kathryn