With the weekend's event kicking off tomorrow night I am glad to say I came home at 10pm tonight... and am reasonably sure all will be in place by 5pm tomorrow. Coming down with a virus last week was probably a very good thing... forced me to stay home and during that time I made plans for this weekend and used strategy in place of endless exertion of energy.
Today I picked up Limited Editions prints I'd ordered from original works. During the recent Journal course I conducted over a 5 week period I dug out texts I am fond of, including some by Ben Okri. These were incorporated into works on paper...and I had a request for prints last week so picked them up tonight.
The files for these images were so large I had to work at reducing the resolution a couple of times over.
Now its a little hard to read...the original print is amazing in its clarity.
The text is the final page of Ben Okri's stirring epic poem written for the New Millennium titled 'Mental Fight'.
A little about Ben Okri from British Council | Literature:
In his recent book, A Time for New Dreams (2011), Ben Okri describes poetry as ‘the great river of soul-murmurings that runs within humanity’, and ‘true literature’ as ‘the encounter of possibilities’ that ‘tears up the script of what we think humanity to be’.
Such poetic metaphors and humane concerns indeed characterise the peculiar beauty of Okri’s writing. This can be read as blending the African oral storytelling tradition with Magic Realism.
A long-time resident in London, Okri takes as his grand subject the post-colonial history of his ancestral Nigeria, conjuring up panoramas of souls, visions, dreams, and suffering humanity’s struggle against exploitation and corruption. The latter especially resonates throughout the fabulous trilogy of novels that began with The Famished Road (1991), his several collections of short stories, essays, and poetry volumes including the just-published Wild (2012). Other important subjects for Okri are the demands of art and politics, symbolised in rich flights of fancy, allied to Jonathan Swift-like satirical allegories.
To read the whole article click here.
The second artwork quotes a much-loved excerpt from Arcadia, a novel of Okri's from around 2004-5. I cant tell you how many times I have painted text from this chapter of the book.
If you are interested its quite straight-forward for me to take orders to print on demand and send inside Australia... I will have to work through the OS scenario before I make that offer.
Send a message if you wish to know more.
And if you live near me then do come over to the studio in the next few days and say hello!
cheerio,
x Sophie
