Art From The Edge Of Time

Sky Boat of the Durotriges

There now, let them rise up: the dark voices, the light voices,
The feathered, the fervid, the iron road of truth is a road we must go down
And the boat of morning and the waters of night.
We are three of indeterminate form:
Too fast, too patient, too vast to keep a single shape.
We are three, is all you need to know, the indicator of splendour.
They see us who know us, they know us who see us.
We glide on shadowed moments, in dreaming time,
On pools of blood and pools of passion.
Words that approach silence ornament us.
They say it is a boat, a barque, but it wavers as a reflection does,
As a path in shimmering summer air, as firelight in a drunken hall.
For we ride beyond the waves of light, on photonic tides,
A boat that is…

Please click on this link to view a preview of my newly finished book:

SNAKE SPIRAL TORC

We slide spiraling
Ferociously nonchalant
Eyes on fire, laughing.

The tumble of sun on sun
The silk whisper, pale moonlight
Equations piled up,
The footprints marking time,
Precise dancers through space.

A knot upon hillsides,
A marching shadow in the valley.
Enchained to the motion,
Slave of raw power, sudden beauty.

This is our sign.
That we dance the dance
Between dusk and dawn
According to the paths before us.

A continuation of my sporadic project to re-introduce Iron Age Celtic imagery and world-view into the world art vocabulary and other grandiose schemes…..

—

HE WHO

Seated god
Says:
“your eyes
are held
Captive
To my stillness.”

He who,
nameless,
named
Now sits,
throned naked
In memory halls.

He who,
voiceless,
whispers
In echoing soul.

Tied by more
than chance,
Tied by here,
by holding stare.

He who
holds steady
the golden promise
Of sun’s journey –
torc horizon,
Aloft,
glinting heavy.

Joined:
the two apart
woven now
To strong chain.
Just like this.

Eye locked,
mind forged,
Welded,
hammered
across lifetimes.

He who,
naked,
needs no armour,
Who,
cross-legged,
needs no defence.
Mountain looking,
ocean speaking,
Still as centuries.

He who,
hair braided,
hair cloaked,
Looks out from,
in to ,
Within, within
This circle,
This heavy
wheel horizon.

He who,
Is.

—-

This is one of the most enigmatic of coin art images, as the simple ones sometimes are. A naked seated male figure. Either with long braided hair or with a…

If you look at the white pattern above, the peltas can be seen at six, ten and two o-clock, they resemble cross-sections of mushrooms.

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TORC TALK (PELTA MOTIF)

Well, it was a long time ago that I covered Celtic Art in Art History, and I was never particularly happy with the name labels often given to Celtic motifs, so I suppose confusing a pelta with a trumpet spiral is to be a little expected (particularly when one can be made up of elements of the other). Nonetheless ,that error was mine. As I was playing with the comma-like form of the magatama it morphed into the cresent-like, arced, spiral-ended, mushroom cross-section known as a ‘pelta’.

This name, ‘pelta’ comes from a type of light shield used by the Greeks and Romans, deriving from an original used in Thrace. This itself tells us more about the natural territory and…