one more time with feeling…

Art has always been a means of escape for me, from myself, from my surroundings, from a page, whether from a boring Sunday afternoon or from classes as a child, from meetings or conferences as an adult.

In my blog, touches of sense… this search for freedom is constant.

While what is most important for me is to recapture the sensations that I have always had since my childhood when making art, I have come to accept that working on my craft is necessary.

I find myself a little perplexed when I think about this issue.

Perhaps thought isn’t the answer, I shall follow my instincts.

I am suddenly reminded of a quotation of Leo Van Lier:

“To perceive we must act; to act we must perceive. Activity in one’s environment brings forth the affordances in those environments.”

Dreams drawn

Engraved on a corner of scrap, the drawing takes form.

Escaping from dutiful participation, I am engrossed in crude line, simple colour, unplanned sketch.

This art is still alive to me.

Resistant to academic form, I make do with child-informed imagery. It has a keen edge.

I brandish it now.

It remains stubbornly ignorant of rigour, it appears quite oblivious to science.

From, a sunlit window-sill, a dull page opens up distant horizons to us....alone.

I am there again, revisiting a forgotten encampment. There is warmth, there is fire, there are a thousand stories to be heard. She was always there for me.

How can one explain that however far one goes from oneself one always returns to one's imperturbable essence, one's dreams...

Wherever my path shall lead, I am, as ever, prepared for uncertain journey. I will need little luggage.

Left with the memory of some beaten up biro, a last pencil stub, and a sunlit window-sill; I will be free.

Dreams-drawn will know no bounds.

touches of sense…2014

Any scrap of paper will do.

(The scrap above, on which the image of an old man is drawn, is an example.)

This class has got nothing to do with me.

I shall be elsewhere.

touches of sense…2015

Shriek

So those were my conference notes. I had almost forgotten. They appeared in disorder, on my desk.

I focused my attention on drawing escape.

It appeared in the bottom right hand corner.

Shriek.

I know it when I feel it... There is a starting point. It isn't a photographic image.

More than an image there is an urge. First strokes of a brush pen. I am taken up, defined in a curve.

First angles, first volumes of the body. Whose body? Whose body will it be? Verticality. Crosshatching.

Lettering, familiar scribbled lettering.

EXHAUSTED.

Change implement. Where's that red BIC pen? I need that red BIC pen.

I need it's cut into the paper. I need it's disresepect.

I had some time, some peace, some desire.

Going back to school.

I had been working on my drawing technique, academically, like I used to do at school. I hated it.

There are moments when my soul erupts in revolt at constraints which I have accepted being imposed on myself. There are moments when I feel the need to return to basics.

I feel reassured learning more about the voices of artists behind their work.

Picasso would altenate between "studies" - careful "drawing" and apparent flourishes of revolt.

A man who at times fell into despair when thinking of the appearance of photography.

What should an artist do when faced with "photorealism"?

"I might as well kill myself"... he thought.

Picasso decided to paint what he felt not what he saw.

touches of sense… 2018

touches of light, preciously preserved.

First published in touches of sense….August 12 2021,

The heightened attention, the heightened emotions, present during an afternoon’s walk with my eldest son are expressed in images: expansive panoramas, tree-lined avenues, the sculptural boughs of a tree, a sun-lit path.

Few words were spoken.

Few words are necessary.

A page escapes to leafy paths.

An instant of communion with a Cézanne.

A5 sketchpad, framing expression of infinite dimensions.

Kilometres becoming scaled in centimetres.

Touches of light preciously preserved.

Unfocused focus washing weariness away.

Ephemera rendered eternal.

Taking a moment to contemplate.

Pause, gaze, breathe in, remember.

Moving, losing sight, feeling loss.

Remembrance.

That moment.

That minutiae.

Words tramp through grass like Wellington Boots.

Stop stomping around.

Present movement moments evaporate.

Fine edge, broad sweep, fanned lines.

Found in nature.

Lost in flow.

Time absent in presence.

Touches of light preciously preserved.

l’essence de “some way back”.

“Wooded Ways II” 2021

Entretemps…

Me voilà, je me trouve toujours entre…

En jonglant continuellement entre deux langues nous somme parfois contraints à accepter que certains concepts, certaines expressions ne sont pas traduisibles.

Face à cette réalité nous pouvons essayer de faire recours à des explications plus ou moins satisfaisantes.

Pour vraiment commencer à comprendre ce qui c’est un fonctionnaire ou un pont de mois de mai, il faut les avoir vécu.

En imaginant ce qui allait devenir ce site web, j’avais écrit un article sur mon blog touches of sense… qui était une façon de faire une annonce publique d’une démarche longuement réflechié: je voulais changer de cap et travailler sérieusement sur l’art visuel.

J’avais déjà décrit le secteur de ma recherche artistique:

explorer la nature ephemère de la vie via la figuration et l’abstraction, le flow, et la gribouille, l’intention et la sérendipité.

J’ai toujours été hypersensible à la fragilité de la vie et ses passages clés. Fils de pasteur anglican, ma vie a été rhythmé par les baptêmes, les mariages, les obseques et les fêtes réligieuses.

Très jeune, mon espace de jeu favouri était avec les fossoyeurs dans le cimitère à côté de notre maison. J’adorais creuser des trous sur la plage mais dans la cimitière il y avait même des échelles à escalader.

Mon meilleur ami c’était un arbre de le jardin, avec qui j’inventais de multiples aventures.

Je passais des heures allongé dans le champs à côté de chez nous pour observer des pays féeriques dessinés par les nuages.

Faire des dessins ou des peintures comme enfant étaient une façon de documenter ce je perçevais dans ces nuages sur une page.

Quand j’étais enfant, je prenais du plaisir à barbouiller, à éclabousser, à gribouiller sur des bouts de papier, sans forcement essayer de répresenter plus que ma joie de vivre.

L’essence de “some way back…”

Je vie intensément l’instant présent quand je me promène. Je m’arrête pour regarder au loin et au près, vers le haut et vers le bas.

Je n’ai jamais perdu ce regard d’émerveillement, ni le plaisir de jouer en faisant de l’art sans forcement une intention de représenter quoique ce soit.

Je me perds pour me trouver autrement.

Je m’inspire d’un lieu réel pour découvrir un lieu hyper-réel voir sur-réel, les images que je crées sont plus ou moins figurative ou abstraites.

Quand je me promène dans un lieu matériel ou immatériel, je suis toujours accompagné par des personnes, des influences, des histoires, des images, des parole marquer mon respect et mon sens de devoir vis-à-vis ceux qui sont matériellement absents mais qui sont néansmoins présentes.

Ces influences sont plus ou moins présentes, parfois je les remarquent longtemps après.

Le sens de '“some way back…”

De l’anglais vers le français:

• “way” a deux sens: un chemin et un moyen ou une façon.

• “back” dans ce contexte veut dire: de retour ou en arrière.

• “some” est un mot qui indique que l’objet est indéfini.

• “some way back" peut indiquer une distance plus ou moins longue mésurée en mètres ou bien ou en années.

• “some way back” peut indiquer un moyen ou une façon de revenir en arrière.

• “some way back” est une acte de création qui se nourissent des moments passés pour aller vers l’avant.

Je ne serai jamais seul.

some way back…

touches of sense…

“I was 19, I was happy, wasn’t sure where I was going. Not much has changed in 30 years.”

Simon Ensor, 2010 

“Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Pablo Picasso 

I have always known that I was an artist.

My father used to ask me to illustrate his sermons. 

My mother told the school I painted like Lowry (I didn’t).

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

John Steinbeck.

My art teacher was a great teacher, he would give me excellent marks but fail to convince me to do some work. 

Others told me to concentrate on more serious subjects.

Below is a drawing I knocked off for homework when I was 16 years old.

The art teacher’s comments have been nagging me ever since.

He will probably never know that the seeds that he sowed, so long ago, are growing here.

I am writing now as a 60 year old Anglo-French artist, driven by a single question:

“What happens when I really put my mind to developing a body of visual art?” 

simon.ensor.art

is a means to document and share responses to that question in artwork and in accompanying blog reflections. 

“An artist without faith is like a painter who was born blind.”

Andrei Tarkovsky

As an artist, I have been working passionately for the past 34 years as an English teacher with thousands of students, exploring the medium and discovering the desire and the means to transform it. I have spent years studying and adapting my actions to the complexity and unpredictability of human interactions and learning. Faith and hard work has enabled this artist to see further…

Art in whatever genre has always been a way to lose myself & to find myself elsewhere, otherwise.

along the way, 

I have developed my voice as a blogger in touches of sense…, connected and collaborated as an educator and as an artist with kindred creative spirits from around the world and employed more or less academic genres to communicate and to publish radical educational messages in conferences, articles and book chapters.

Over a period of 12 years, blog posts became more and more concerned with visual art. The last one, touches of light, preciously preserved marked some sort of epiphany.

“A page escapes to leafy paths[...]Ephemera rendered eternal.Taking a moment to contemplate. Pause, gaze, breathe in, remember. Moving, losing sight, feeling loss.”

Ever since I was born, I have been acutely aware of the fragile nature of life and the infinite value of artistic expression.

My father’s work was rhythmed by life’s passing seasons and the rituals of baptism, marriage, and burial.

My mother shared her love for music, poetry, gardening and an eye for beauty to be found in driftwood, pebbles, and bric-à-brac. 

simon.ensor.art

Is made up of moments of figurative and abstract meaning making. I find flow and express emotions by letting myself be moved by the moment and the media, making marks intentionally or serendipitously (accidentally). I am drawn to gaze at distant horizons and to investigate universes glimpsed through close focus. At times, images emerge organically with no apparent source. Certain motifs are  recurrent: nature, landscape, seascapes, mountains, rocks, trees, paths…the objective is always to discover new lands to be able to perceive what lies beyond the self, the subject, the page.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Marcel Proust

touches of sense… has been a means to map out areas I want to explore and to excavate and to study the reasons why they are important.

Each collection of artwork, each image has its back story. reflection accompanies creation. 

Between 2014, and 2018 much of my artistic work was multi-media,collaborative and digital, combining poetry, spoken voice and images in assemblages. I owe much to my friends of #clmooc.

Since 2018, starting with “A vine branches wildly…”  I have concentrated my art practice predominantly on watercolor painting, ink, charcoal and graphite drawing. 

The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know and how much you need to learn.

When I speak to those who I consider to be master artists, I am comforted when they agree with this quote of George Leonard:

“We fail to realise that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to fail, and try again. For as long as he or she lives.”

I have stayed true to my path day after day, year after year. 

To my surprise it appears that this is its latest twist. 

I am working now on some way forward.

Simon Ensor