070 http://www.AmericanArtCollector.com
COLLECTOR'S FOCUS
FIGURATIVE ARTT
he visionary poet and painter
William Blake (1757-1827) wrote,
“The tree which moves some to
tears of joy is in the eyes of others
only a green thing that stands in the way.
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...
and some scarce see nature at all. But to the
eyes of the man of imagination, nature is
imagination itself.”
Nature has inspired artists as subject
and setting for centuries. Today, artists
continue to explore its perennial mysteries
and address the discoveries of science
about its rapidly increasing fragility.
Alexandra Eldridge is a visual artist
who co-founded an establishment for
the arts, Golgonooza, based upon Blake’s
philosophies. She writes, “My paintings
emerge from a place where contradictions
are allowed, paradox reigns and reason is
abandoned. My search is for the inherent
radiance in all things...the extraordinary in
the ordinary.”
In her photo-based painting, The Sinews
of Thy Heart, she quotes from Blake’s
poem The Tyger. In the poem, Blake
contemplates a creator who could make
a creature so beautiful and so fearsome,
asking “And what shoulder, & what art, /
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” He
saw that creator not as an anthropomor-
phic someone “out there” but as a creative
spirit—imagination—in each person.
Eldridge paints a regal yet enigmatic
tiger at the feet of a young man in a formal
Victorian photograph. On his shoulder
she has painted a bluebird, symbolic of joy
and prosperity. It immediately brought to
my mind the Oscar-winning song, Zip-a-
Dee-Doo-Dah from Walt Disney’s 1946
film Song of the South, an early animation
and live action film. An upbeat and sunny
song, it begins:Human Nature
BY JOHN O’HERN- Alexandra Eldridge, The Sinews of Thy Heart, mixed
media on vintage photograph on panel, 60 x 40" - Haynes Galleries, Seraphim, oil on canvas,
35.4 x 23.6", by Bryony Bensly.
1