Welcome to the dragon's blog...
Here you will find musings on the nature of Celtic art and perhaps some insights into its power and potential. Also, like a river, expect some meandering!
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Celtic Art - Potential and Power
by Mike Terrett - 22:43 on 18 November 2013
Why is Celtic art so relevant today? Why does it continue to fascinate and inspire?
Perhaps we can explore these questions obliquely rather than trying to find any direct answer?! Maybe we can go for a walk and explore the peripheries of our vision and not just head to what lies infront? Let's go!
I find that there is something elusive about the traditional patterns and expressions of Celtic art. Take for example the pagan, organic forms of the La Tène period. They are both geometric in their precision and ambiguous and improvised in their design. Is there a hidden message or is it that nature has no hard and fast meaning?
The impulse to enter into this blog came from a series of fleeting and exploratory thoughts... 'Celtic art is a potent artform because its vocabulary contains ancient motifs as well as more recent perennial forms...' On its journey into our times it has collected ancient spiral patterns, weavings and knots, mazes and pathways, steps, chequers and all manner of natural forms and creatures. All these motifs - inspirationally and brilliantly brought together by the founding artists - are fundamental keys of life and language and therefore combine to make a powerful means of expression. They also - no doubt - mirror our own ancient origins.
The language of its patterns - or the patterns of its language - have an ancestral voice as well as a modern parlance. I like the analogy of spoken and written language because this is what we use everyday. Surely then, other practices and disciplines (such as art) have to work in the same way and somehow still make sense. That doesn't mean they have to be rational though! Take poetry, for example... It's when we move away from form that we begin to understand it in new ways...
It's the mirror at a distance that gives us a glimpse of our true place and perspective in the present. It cannot be made of just what we call and accept as modern. The power and promise of Celtic art lies in its ancient roots that, like a tree, reach out and express through the elusive present...
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