It is hard sometimes to see any good in humans. Listen to too much news and it can seem as if we do only harm, contaminating all we touch. Echoes of King Midas, who, we are reminded by Aristotle, died of starvation – an ‘unforeseen consequence’ of his own vainglorious wish.
At the moment I’m not working. All the work for my show is at the framer’s and I am supposed to be resting my arm – engraver’s elbow apparently. It’s not easy not working but I did spend a good part of this afternoon sitting very still, watching small birds in the apple tree. A charm of Goldfinches, twenty strong, came and went in waves; adorning my neighbours Alamanchier like Christmas decorations before descending into the apple tree en noisy colourful masse, scrapping and feeding frantically in the cold weather. In a seemingly separate bird-universe a male blackbird worked the same spot all afternoon – picking at blood-red crab-apples, now softened and blackened by the frost.
I am left wondering if the real beauty, the true value of a human life will only become apparent to us when we take proper note of the other life on earth?
I am left wondering if the real beauty, the true value of a human life will only become apparent to us when we take proper note of the other life on earth?
Outside (songbird) Mezzotint engraving. 5″ X 5″ © Sarah Gillespie 2014
Love as Old as Water – new drawings and mezzotints, opens at Beaux Arts in London on 28th January.
Beaux Arts, 48 Maddox Street, London W1S 1AY 020 7493 1155
