A SACRED MATTER
My practice is deeply rooted
in repetition as a material prayer. Invoking transformation and healing, these
prayers address past sufferings that continue to haunt the present. Appearing
as shadows in the overlapping ‘ghosts’ of colliding brushstrokes, such
hauntings give form to otherwise formless traumas, the apparitions tracing the
wound in its residue. My unfolding engagement with numbers, symmetries, and
ritual action is meditative and devotional, a means of transcending the self
towards an understanding of the interconnected, miraculous nature of all
beings. These reflections find resonance in Kabbalah’s numerical interpretation
of holy texts, where every Hebrew letter is given a value, and each number, in
turn, is lent a spiritual significance. 18 and its multiples, which symbolise
life in mystic tradition, are central to my process, as is 8 for the
transcendence of the physical and 13 for the attributes of love. In the
recitation of these numbers in my practice, the living and the dead, the
accepted self and its disavowed darkness, the individual and the great
entanglement of the universe find a place to coincide. Mark after mark, gesture
after repeated gesture, counting the brushstrokes with their allotted number
until the paint leaves only a faint trace, the making of each work affords
moments of quiet revelation.
Continuing in this engagement
with numerical mysticism, my attention turns to a ‘sacred matter’ that connects
all things: the self and other, consciousness and cosmos. In this presentation
of works, I find an analogue for the soul or spirit – for the divine presence –
in numbers, which belong to both the material world and the imaginative world,
act upon the earth, are made physically manifest, yet remain simultaneously
abstract. They are the language with which the universe is described, from the
movement of stars and dust particles to the hardness of stones; they are
eternal and abiding yet wholly human in their notation. That my practice has
long engaged the teachings of Kabbalah extends these reflections on numbers
beyond the purely rational towards the spiritual. The physical, the
theoretical, the sacred: numbers transcend these registers of assumed
difference. However mystical or manifest, I regard their values as revelatory
tools of self- and scientific knowledge. The two need not be divisible. As Kabbalist
Yehuda Berg writes: “We are all interconnected. People and the planet. This
connection achieves its highest state through human consciousness.” With
numbers, the invisible workings of nature might be revealed and our desire to
belong, to recognise our place within the intricate web of life, affirmed. My
commitment to counting as an underlying structure aspires toward this most
sacred matter – our human connection to one another and the world.
Invoking transformation and healing, these
prayers address past sufferings that continue to haunt the present. Appearing
as shadows in the overlapping ‘ghosts’ of colliding brushstrokes, such
hauntings give form to otherwise formless traumas, the apparitions tracing the
wound in its residue. My unfolding engagement with numbers, symmetries, and
ritual action is meditative and devotional, a means of transcending the self
towards an understanding of the interconnected, miraculous nature of all
beings. These reflections find resonance in Kabbalah’s numerical interpretation
of holy texts, where every Hebrew letter is given a value, and each number, in
turn, is lent a spiritual significance. 18 and its multiples, which symbolise
life in mystic tradition, are central to my process, as is 8 for the
transcendence of the physical and 13 for the attributes of love. In the
recitation of these numbers in my practice, the living and the dead, the
accepted self and its disavowed darkness, the individual and the great
entanglement of the universe find a place to coincide. Mark after mark, gesture
after repeated gesture, counting the brushstrokes with their allotted number
until the paint leaves only a faint trace, the making of each work affords
moments of quiet revelation.
Edited by Lucienne Bestall
A HANDFUL OF DUST
That the soul might be
ascribed a value, might be possessed of a physical weight, was first proposed
by Dr Duncan MacDougall in 1906. To something so seemingly intangible, he
offered a definitive measure: 21 grams. This mythic ‘weight of the soul’ has
been a lasting preoccupation in my work – the coincidence of the numinous and
the numerical dovetailing with my wider practice. To the doctor’s desire to
describe and circumscribe so ineffable a substance, I offer a more mystical
weight: 18 grams, measured in gold dust. A series of five canvases, A
handful of dust, holds the trace of this alchemical ‘soul’. The works are
individually titled for the levels of soul consciousness in Kabbalah, of which
three reside in the finite body or ‘divine form’ (tzelem Elokim)
and two beyond the physical, in the ‘infinite light’ (demut Elokim).
All five were made by throwing gold pigment in gestures of release, then, once
the ‘dust’ had all settled, using my exhaled breath to shift the powdered
element across the surface until it stopped moving. Unprotected by glass, the
gold is left vulnerable to time and change, easily affected by touch,
necessarily transient. Fragile and precious – a testament to life.
Edited by Lucienne Bestall