Gaylene A. Barnes
Artist’s Statement
Angels track on cellular and galactic FILAMENTS. I cannot sense them, only feel them, in the love they leave behind. I close my eyes, sleep is inevitable. Quietly they come to this end from the beginning, wheeling on cosmic paths of lonely particles, spread so very thin. They are in love with God, but look for me, the Seraphim and Ophanim. They circle the multiverse, waiting for a moment; a rip in the infinite, a small sliver, a golden tear, a cellular membrane, a thought stretched out, a dart of longing, a sigh, a breath.... their viral intelligence spreads across the aeons. In every breath we ask them to enter our short mortality. They are trapped in infinity. Trying to get in.
And be so diluted? Trying to get out. Remembering the Christ of a thousand suns? In sacred symmetry of CO2 there is a way. The beryl merkaba of Ezekiel. A living creature, microbes & membranes. Christ searching for His beloved also took a shortcut. He left tracks. I follow them. It is elemental, it is sacred matter. Why do we destroy it? Force it to comply to our will? Christ would say stop, if He were listened too. But we persist in torturing His ghost of nitrogen and her seven sisters. Breaking bonds that cannot easily be redeemed. Our life-giver and life-taker, a planetary boundary exceeded. Now we must work hard, to feel past the sensual limitations of this small green and blue decad. This beautiful wild five, but polarised. A forgotten fifth element, and controlled wisdom ratios. Our hip will be burst, and we will limp across the multiverse. Forced to go so slowly into the future that the tracks disappear in front of us, some filaments are already so faint. Quickly, turn our mind to our heart; learn to feel. That is, repent. Learn to feel the path of the filament to God. It is a blue wash in a golden flower, resting quietly on the stop of infinite bifurcations.
“Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.” Ezekiel 1:20
Biography
Gaylene Anne Barnes (Canterbury, NZ) has a multi-disciplinary practice as a painter and filmmaker. She explores nature, science and spirituality with reference to wisdom traditions. Shehas completed painting commissions for international and local patrons, and was invited to attend the Arteles Creative Centre artist residency in Finland, January 2020. Her recent exhibition of videoart and drawings “Duration” at the Ashburton Art Gallery was well received by the community. Her egg tempera and illuminated watercolour paintings build on the tradition of sacred iconography, a grammar first learnt in England from artist Aidan Hart (NZ). Traditional icons are intersections between divine and material realms, and enable contemplation of transfigured sacred matter. Gaylene is also an organic farmer, fermenter and herbalist – thus she often grows, grounds, infuses and distills her paints and mediums from scratch – using the elements of animal, vegetable and mineral in a conscious manner. Whilst many of her works are in the tradition of contemporary iconography, she also works with objective art. Her recent study of sacred geometry – especially the work of Keith Critchlow, ancient perennial philosophers, workshops in Granada on Islamic Art, and study at the Princes School of Traditional Arts in London – have been a major inspiration. Gaylene has been a self-employed full-time artist, creating works using words or images, moving or meditative - ever since she won the Southland Young Contemporary of the Year Award in 1988. Since then Gaylene has been nominated for awards in film design and film editing. She has had her short films screened internationally in festivals from Sydney to Berlin to Alaska. Her recent feature screened nationally.
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