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BREATHING WITH MY EYES
THE TITLE PIECE

See below images for commentary.

DAYLIGHT VIEW	SAME PIECE - SHIMMER VIEW
Breathing with my Eyes, R. Lachlan, 2002, mixed media on canvas, 152cm x 122cm	Breathing with my Eyes, R. Lachlan, 2002, mixed media on canvas, 152cm x 122cm

Some info about the imagery in the painting Breathing with my Eyes

This painting has been two years in coming.

A painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., titled St Lucy (c. 1470) by Francesco del Cossa, illustrates the Christian legend (c. C3rd AD) of Lucy who, among other things, was condemned to burn at the stake but the flames did not touch her. The reference to her eyes is that a would-be suitor was so smitten with her eyes that she feared that this would do him real harm so she tore her eyes out and sent them to him on a platter. There is a similar oriental mystic legend in India, but there the protagonist is a man who tears his eyes out and sends them to the lady smitten by them. Lucy is at times also illustrated with a lamp to signify illumination and a poniard (when the flames did not touch her, the authorities stabbed her in the neck with a poniard instead, successfully killing her). Now, I ain't no saint(!), but coming from such a long period of involvement in Asian concepts I was particularly taken with the cross-reference between East and West in the myth about the eyes.

The image in del Cossa's painting of Lucy holding a pair of eyes on a stem so that at first they appear to be some sort of flower really impressed me. It jibed perfectly with my comment to my friend after my first visit to Italy in April 2000 that it was "like breathing for the first time, breathing with my eyes". Extending the notion, it is as though I carry my eyes about on a wand, taking them for a lifelong tour of human existence, while I dream on, making images...

Meanwhile, before this, I had been reading Dante (Inferno and Paradisio), and then the whole thing about fire and flames has been swirling around since I finished the gold Veil (II). About the Veil pieces I wrote in my diary at the time that "I wanted to climb out of my skin" and in the same period, I wrote in my diary when working on Dance (go to www.shimmerart.com/shimmerart_gallery5.htm) that "The wrestling match leaves me with ripples of fire flashing to and fro under my skin". A few months after I finished those pieces, I saw the movie Stigmata which, although lapsing into some silly Hollywoodisms, gives an unadulterated portrayal of the brutally searing nature of spirit experience (no New Age tryst with the Divine in some soppy glade, you know!), replete with fire and flames. Yet fire does not have to burn; it can illuminate... so now we are back full circle to Lucy and Italy.

Indelibly seared into my mind's eyes (out there on their stem!) while in Florence was the astonishing reaction I had to all the Medieval/ Gothic work. I remember turning and momentarily glancing back at some of these as I exited one of the galleries in the Acedemia Gallery where Michelangelo's David is housed, and will never forget what I saw: although Andrea del Sarto, born about a decade after del Cossa's death, is my all time favourite high Renaissance artist, it was the medieval paintings that came home with me, and the extraordinary way in which the blues of the Madonna's robes float away from their gilded background as unfettered ethereal entities. I was transported.

Back in the States, I began prowling the National Gallery of Art in D.C. - they have a magnificent collection of Medieval (and Renaissance) art, probably the best outside the Cloisters and the Met. I shot rolls and rolls of film of this part of their collection. I bought a number of reproductions which are taped to the wall of my studio. In a radical move for someone so fixated on Asia and Asian philosophy for so long, I bought "Signs and Symbols in Christian Art", Ferguson, G., 1954 (paperback 1961), Oxford University Press, NY.

Then 15 months later I was visiting home, driving through bush fires along the coast, and seeing and being in our Australian blue ocean.

Meanwhile, I had begun creeping up on the Italy/ NGA experience but had to get free of the organza pieces and Asian references. When sea creatures/references began appearing in the Rip series, I was ready for the blue and could finally catch up with what as sown in Florence...

So Breathing With My Eyes is finally here, a shimmer treated image to push the floating blue and illuminating flame, simultaneously pushing back the calendar to Medieval times and forward to now, radicalizing the visual quotation of del Cossa's purely Renaissance version of Lucy. Breathing With My Eyes is peopled by anything but a saint but instead with someone with dark eyeliner and lipstick, the softening features of middle age held at a much less humble angle than Lucy's, holding a brush not a poniard, her eyes out on a sortie by themselves informing the dreaming brush, her hands more vigorous than Lucy's yet this a-temporal subject is sitting pensively still with her legs crossed within the veil of embodied experience but her left toe broaches the flame...

(Throughout its creation I have suspended all social interaction, barely spoken with anyone - even poor Shayne - and done the absolute minimum of written communication. I have listened to nothing but a CD of Gregorian Chant, imbuing the piece with this measured peaceful expression in voice, just "audible" I hope to the quiet and still viewer. It is speculated, by the way, that the Gregorian hand - the medieval method of notating modal vocal music - is derived directly from Indian modal chanting notation methods, and there are specific correlations between Indian, Greek, and Ecclesiastical musical modes.)

Ranna

(Copyright, R.Lachlan, 2002.) 

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UPCOMING EXHIBITS:
Nemacolin Woodlands Galleries, PA, May 1 - October 31, 2004;
Embassy of Australia, Washington D.C, September, 2004.

Survey other recent work by Ranna

Survey Ranna's work from 1977 - 2000.

TO VIEW &/ OR NEGOTIATE FOR ANY OF THESE PIECES,
Email or phone Shayne Lachlan -
Ph: USA 540-974-6669.

OR
AS FOLLOWS:

Dr Ranna-Lesley Lachlan (PhD, RPP, VCST, BFA, Grad. D. Mat. Anth.) RANNA® ARTS INCORPORATED (LLC) STUDIO LOCATION: 5413 Main St, Stephens City, VA 22655, U.S.A.		MAIL PO Box 971, Stephens City, VA 22655, U.S.A. Ph: USA (540) 533-5403

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