Thomas Williams

Trees?

There are trees in Venice, of course there are. There are thousands of trees in Venice. Sometimes you see them from the vaporetto, often on one of the other islands. San Michele, the cemetery island, has beautiful, fittingly elegant, cypresses. There are plenty in the Giardini of course and the Sant' Elena gardens near where we're living. Sometimes, walking around the city there is the glimpse of green through a gate or over the top of a wall. In the Lorenzo Lotto painting of St Anthony in SS Giovanni & Paolo, the saint is enthroned in front of a wall which has roses and greenery peeping over the top: a hortus conclusus, the promise of shade, of rest, intimations of Eden.
The Venetian trees I love most, though, are not the ones that grow. I love to think, walking through the calli and campi, that there are moments when the solid, paved ground I'm walking on is made by packing imported earth between tree trunks sunk into the bed of the lagoon. I love getting the vaporetto out to Lido or Murano and being taken between the rows of bricole, the massive tree trunks, usually numbered and tied in groups of three or more, which mark the deeper channels.
Then, there are the trees that never grew. When I walk through the Piazzetta, it's usually with a view to getting out the other side and away from the throngs as quickly as possible and avoiding collision with a forest of selfie sticks. Sometimes , though, there's just enough space to step back and enjoy the sturdy, almost squat, stone columns of the Palazzo Ducale, bursting into life.

Canal Water Colours

I'm a relief printmaker working in monochrome. Most of my work looks as though I've printed it with black ink. In fact, I mix about four fifths ultramarine with one fifth black. This gives the finished print a softer quality. Also, I tend to print on handmade Japanese papers and don't use a press. The ink is transferred from block to paper by burnishing it with my thumbnail or, for bigger blocks, with the back of a pudding spoon. What this means is that any inconsistencies in the paper or any unevenness in the pressure I apply, produce variations in the tone of the ink. The Holy Grail of printmaking is the elusive "perfect black". A rich, deep, even, unbroken black. This has never interested me. I enjoy work which holds the mark of its making.
In the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the mixing of colours. There is a delicacy in adding just the right amount of black to the ultramarine, so that the end result is softer than pure black but doesn't look blue either. Outside the door of S Maria Ausiliatrice is the Rio de S Ana. Standing in the doorway, when there is nobody in the space, I've been noticing how the colour of the water changes. On most days it's a milky, greenish turquoise, sometimes more blue and sometimes more green. When it rains (which it hasn't that often!) the water darkens and I've seen it almost purple, like the bloom on a ripe plum.
How this will find its way back into my printmaking, I don't know yet but looking at, thinking about, and trying to find all of those canal colours in my water colour box, has given me some quiet and gentle moments.

Sgwrs Creadigol

As part of the creative process that is being an invigilator at the Venice Biennale, the Welsh team hosted a group of invigilators last night, 15 of us altogether.
The conversation was wide ranging. Over about an hour, as the courtyard at S Maria Ausiliatrice got gradually darker, we talked about the creative space and how it feels to be out of our studios and our comfort zones, about spontaneity and the pop-up, we thought about hierarchies and how we place ourselves in relation to them.
One of the most exciting aspects of the time here has been this sort of exchange of ideas and the finding of links between such a diverse range of people and creative practices.
It felt very positive to provide a space for this to happen.

Il trasporto!

A Venetian painter came into the exhibition today, Sebastiano.

He was full of energy and excitement and enthusiasm.

He told me he has a studio this big and drew a cube in the air only as big as his arms could draw. He said that the exhibition is like a journey between anxiety and peace, “tra ansia e pace”.

A french man came in today, Tibo.

Born in France, brought up in shanghai and living in Canada. We talked about questions. About finding the question. About trusting the feeling and then asking it questions. About it being ok to see where that took you. Even if where it took you was to uncertainty. About walking out of the exhibition into uncertainty and allowing that to be positive, creative.

A family came in today.

Catalan mother, Italian father and their child. The conversation was in Catalan, Italian and English. We talked about small nations and language and seeing. We talked about being hungry and travel.

Many other people came in today.

I had conversations with some, exchanged greetings with some, swopped smiles and nods with some. Failed to connect with some.

Sebastiano wrote in the visitor's book “Questo e il bello dell'arte, il trasporto!”. “This is the beauty of art, transportation!”

I am a different person now to the person I was this morning.

Saint Sebastian at the Ca' D'Oro

Went to the Ca' D'Oro this morning to look at the Mantegna St Sebastian which was the starting point for Helen's "Caetera Fumus" and gave her the title for the show "...the rest is smoke".

I winced when I saw how the arrows pass through Sebastian's flesh and so, perhaps, understood something of the devotional power of the work. That and the weight of the body through the left foot, which rests on the painted edge of the niche that Mantegna has placed him in.

The other thing that struck me was the red in the painting, a colour which runs through Helen's exhibition. There are red highlights on the flights of two of Mantegna's arrows and near the tip of another, there is the red of Sebastian's blood and the red of the strange and beautiful string of beads hanging on either side of his head.