I am Silver (2023)

Original media: Inks, gouache, acrylics, watercolour, coloured pencil, gold leaf and gold thread

Painted for 'HOME' – a solo exhibition at Heart Gallery, Hebden Bridge.

This is Heptonstall in November 2022 on a very bright, very cold day. The light is hazy. Hebden Bridge is below the mist. The ruins of the church of St Thomas a’Becket sit in the grounds of the newer, Victorian church of St Thomas the Apostle. The grave of the king of the coiners, David Hartley, lies at the entrance to the old church. Silvia Plath is buried in the new cemetery behind the newer church. ‘I am Silver’ is the first line of her poem ‘Mirror’:

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The poem was suggested by someone else and I liked the colours in that first verse. It seemed to suit it.

Available as a signed limited edition print, hand-finished with gold leaf and gold thread. All prints are mounted and can be posted, unless purchased framed.