'Way' Ceiling Painting Part 2
2m x 500mm
'Way'
© 2011 Liz Douglas
'Way'
A painted ceiling
Liz Douglas recently made her first ceiling painting for a bothy near Ettrick Pen on the Southern Upland Way, as part of the ‘Way’ Project*.
Parnassia Palustris
Grass of Parnassus
‘I believe a leaf of grass is no less
Than a journey-work of the stars’
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 1891
A painted ceiling as a poetic mediation on the flower Grass of Parnassus, once known as ‘bog star’, later named by Swedish biologist and taxonomist
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).
A way of mind in mythology – Mount Parnassus, and the Greek muses of poetry and song, of astronomy and meditation, of both art and science.
A way of making: fine lines of the plant stem and root, colours of rock and place, shapes of microscopic pollen grain.
All echo the plant – this ‘honorary grass’.
We sense place in our journeys by foot or by road to get to this ‘bay in the hills’ which is Over Phawhope.
*The Way project, an installation by 5 artists/writers – Liz Douglas, Kate Foster, Allan Harkness, Andrew Mackenzie, Mary Morrison.