victoria crowe
Another Time, Another Place christine de luca
INTRODUCTION christina jansen, the scottish gallery
Another Time, Another Place is perhaps best described as a book of contemplation. It comprises twelve paintings by Victoria Crowe which inspired twelve poems by Christine De Luca to form a beautiful conversation between an artist and a poet. We are fortunate to have further insights from both contributors in personal notes which deepen our understanding of the shared creative process. The project has a third dimension: music, courtesy of The Michael Cuddigan Trust which has sponsored composers and performers to create a song cycle inspired by image and word. The limitations on all of our freedoms during the pandemic came for Crowe immediately after her 2019 retrospective and the survey show of her portraits in the previous year; collaborative considerations of the past, all the more poignant as she struggled with serious illness. A real and psychological pause ensued: no exhibition commitments and no demands from her public life allowed her the chance to do something for herself. These twelve paintings represent a return to work in her studio in West Linton, where Crowe has found full expression of her life force and then been generous and imaginative enough to share her work with a poet. Creativity is always a response to something, but also a point of departure, and on the following pages, we become part of the artist’s spiritual journey. Victoria Crowe in her Edinburgh studio, 2019. Photograph © Kenneth Gray. 3
on the cusp
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on the cusp
Embers of sun copper the branches: earthing rods that ground us, linking land to sky; they arc upwards with a boldness, red and fierce out of the mirk. They are alive, ablaze. Perhaps there is burning further away, in canyons beyond that benevolent watershed, beyond the rim of trees shrivelling on its lip. Boundaries are soft and indistinct: a lochan could find equilibrium in blue infused with coral; or a roof glint coldly as it douses flaming light. The maple endures, daringly propitious, fully charged to shape a brighter future.
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making all things new
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making all things new
The world shrinks to a window-pane, holds its breath. Morning light, – a hesitant revelation – infiltrates a fretwork of branches, warms the sky to a pearly scumble. To the right, an echo, a refrain. But, nose to the glass, a cold fumble, a once upon a time prospect, obscure, half-frosted; an inner world unsure. We stumble onwards, occasionally surprised by a clarity we thought lost; or mesmerised by a reflection of a world made new.
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‘Great art is both timeless and of its moment. The twelve paintings by Victoria Crowe and the accompanying poems by Christine De Luca in this book will resonate powerfully with our memories of isolation and confinement during lockdown. But through the intensity of their observation, their emotion and imagination, the artist and the poet remind us that we should never take the ordinary for granted and that there is mystery and wonder to be found even in our most familiar surroundings. Confidence mingles with fragility, joy with melancholy, in these words and images of extraordinary clarity and beauty.’ Sir John Leighton, Director-General, the National Galleries of Scotland