A series of charcoals and paintings inspired by the similarities and parallels between Britain and Japan. Two densely populated island nations, both monarchies and both with a culture of manners and courtesies involving rituals and etiquettes that are often a mystery to an outsider but which enable the inhabitants to maintain a degree of privacy and personal space. Without these rituals and courtesies life would be far more difficult in two such crowded countries and they enable a measure of privacy, even if illusory, in an overcrowded environment.

Much of my work is about trying to convey the individual as a powerful presence with a degree of dignity, self-respect and privacy and I feel very strongly that just as I take full responsibility for my art, I want to convey my subjects as fully responsible for their actions.

If my subject is from the natural world, for example a flower, I get great pleasure from painting or drawing them out of context so that their beauty is seen as inherent rather than contextual and as I understand it, this is how many Japanese artists also work.

I have never been to Japan but have always been aware of its passionate artistic culture and the delicacy in much of it’s art tradition: I am conscious that this is an influence on my work that deserves further exploration.

‘THE BRAILLE ORBS’

Understanding through Touch.

I wish to celebrate the lives of John Milton and Louis Braille and want to bring the Braille language into the language of art.

I feel in this instance that it is the Braille language that should be used to form the sculpture, not the image of the poet nor the linguistic inventor, hence ‘The Braille Orbs’ rather than a figurative sculpture of Milton and Braille. Two great men, both blind, both communicators, separated in life by 2 centuries and not to my knowledge ever linked by a sculpture before.

This installation epitomises my passionately held belief that sculpture is made to be touched as well as seen and it seemed to me that an effective way to make this point is to create a piece that is all about understanding through touch, i.e. Braille.

Art is for me about beauty and communication and the words of the blind poet John Milton in his sonnet “On His Blindness” are extraordinarily beautiful. I felt the first three words, “When I Consider” would help me to achieve my objective. It is also my hope that the 5 elements (consisting of 3 Orbs each depicting one of the words in both Braille and the Roman alphabets and 2 walls denoting quotation marks each described with the full poem in both alphabets) that make up this work will be regarded as inherently beautiful in both their material and their form.

There have been some interesting initiatives across the world in recent years to make art more available to the blind but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no sculpture that is specifically made to be experienced by Braille readers. Initially I decided the words should be legible only in Braille, unreadable by the sighted and unviewable by the blind but, after consideration, felt I would better meet my intention of bringing Braille into greater prominence by emphasising accessibility. As Milton was Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Secretary To The Foreign Tongues’ i.e. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as well as a Poet, the shared experience of the Roman Alphabet and Braille form of communication seems particularly appropriate.

copyright©RosemaryMasson2010