mark spray
I'll invite the poets

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I’ll invite the Poets

This collection of new work has developed within a framework of self imposed restrictions. The physical location for all the paintings and drawings is a valley close to my home in West Penwith. This is the first time that I have created a collection of paintings on this smaller scale.
 
The idea of inviting the poets is very much belonging to my own response to poetry, and indeed music from a young age. I have always had a visual response to both art forms. Reading the “Iron man” by Ted Hughes gave me a life long passion for poetry. Whilst re-reading this recently, the same images came to mind almost thirty years on, creating a powerful emotional response that I can’t explain.
 
The link with music is also visual and connected to my childhood, often listening to classical music with my grandfather George, he would tell stories as we listened to the music. One piece being Beethoven symphony No.4 in B flat, listening to this we would be running through a wood. Many years later listening again I can still smell that wood, having never physically been there. This is what I am attempting to create in the work. Now reading the selected poems I return to the paintings and the Valley from which the work developed.
 
The paintings walk the line between representational and abstracted elements, the intention being to allow greater access to the work for the viewer. This could be on a purely visual level, cerebral or visceral.

My hope for my work is that given time it will create a response in the viewer similar to my response to the poetry of Ted Hughes, the music of Beethoven and the story telling of George Barnard.

Mark Spray, September 2008

This new Mark Spray collection is heavily steeped in a heady brew of geomorphological investigation and poetic intrigue. Mark doesn’t just draw and paint, he excavates the soil and rock beneath the landscape and sets his spoils in a sophisticated literary context.
 
Speaking as one educated in Earth Science, I see that Mark has an incredible knack of recognizing and incorporating into his paintings and drawings, geologic and geographical features in his local terrain. In this collection he may have tapped the paranormal - several of the paintings give me intense feelings of déjà vu and lead me to the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains of California’s Sequoia National Park that I visited in 2004 but where, I am certain, Mark has never been!
 
A magic collection indeed - complete with a flotilla of  poets, present in spirit if not in body.

Michael Jay, St Just-in-Penwith, September 2008

Please call 01326 318452 (gallery hours) or 01736 786016 (evenings and weekends) to reserve the work of your choice.

Paintings may be collected by arrangement or we can arrange delivery from as little as £20 depending on size and distance. Money back if not entirely satisfied (provided we are informed within 3 days of your work being collected/delivered). Cheques and all major credit cards accepted. Colours may vary between the original paintings and the printed reproductions. All paintings are framed.

See what I want today
(from ‘Variations on Ma Rainey’s see see Rider’ -
Allen Ginsberg)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

Bound each to each by natural piety
(from ‘My heart leaps up when I behold’ -
William Wordsworth)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

To persevere in hope of summer
(from ‘Sisu’ - Lavinia Greenlaw)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas SOLD

Under broken stone I halt
(from ‘The man and the echo’ - W.B.Yeats)
30 x 30cm oil and mixed media on canvas £475

Each new moment my eyes open
(from ‘Orts.’ - Ted Hughes)
30 x 30cm oil and mixed media on canvas SOLD

I stood between them
 (from ‘making strange’ - Seamus Heaney)
30 x 30cmoil and mixed media on canvas £475

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
(from ‘Wants’ - Philip Larkin)
30 x 30cm oil and mixed media on canvas £475

You are the earth that takes root
(from ‘You rise the water opens’ - Paul Eluard)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550

And solitude, and me
(from ‘Rain’ - Edward Thomas)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550       

I stood between them
(from ‘making strange’ - Seamus Heaney)
35 x 35cm drawing SOLDv

Prison’d on watry shore
(from ‘earth’s answer’ - William Blake)
35 x 35cm drawing SOLD

Beautiful sorrow in thy silence
(from ‘Sorrow is my joy’ - John Clair)
35 x 35cm drawing £350

I wandered by the way
(from ‘The Question’ - Shelly)
35 x 35cm drawing £350 

A weeping mouth and a laughing mouth
(from ‘A weeping mouth’ - Yehuda Amichai)
35 x 35cm drawing £350

This day 
(from ‘Landfall’ - Simon Armitage)
35 x 35cm drawing £350 

To begin at the beginning 
(from ‘Under milk wood’ - Dylan Thomas)
55 x 55cm drawing £495

Under broken stone I halt
(from ‘The man and the echo’ - W.B.Yeats)
55 x 55cm drawing SOLD

Forgotten by the ark
(from ‘Poetry’ - Billy Collins)
60 x 30cm drawing £425

There is rain in me
(from ‘There is rain in me’ - D.H.Lawrence)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

In song and dance about the sacred hill
(from ‘Paradise Lost- Book V’ - John Milton)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

Make dust of time
(from ‘Borges’ - Neil Rollinson)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

Go no more a-roving
(from ‘So, we’ll go no more a-roving’ - Lord Byron)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

Beautiful sorrow in thy silence
(from ‘Sorrow is my joy’ - John Clair)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

It knows you
(from ‘Untitled final poem’ - Paul Celan)
20 x 20cm oil and mixed media on canvas £395

Out of solitude, he begins again
(from ‘Disappearances’ - Paul Auster)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550

Or is it only the breeze
(from ‘The Voice’ - Thomas Hardy)
40 x 40 cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550

See what I want today
(from ‘Variations on Ma Rainey’s see see Rider’ - Allen Ginsberg)
35 x 35cm drawing £350

To persevere in hope of summer
(from ‘Sisu’ - Lavinia Greenlaw)
35 x 35cm drawing SOLD

And solitude, and me
(from ‘Rain’ - Edward Thomas)
35 x 35cm drawing SOLD

Bound each to each by natural piety
(from ‘My heart leaps up when I behold’ - William Wordsworth)
35 x 35cm drawing £350

Is now the time?
(from ‘Is now the time?’ - Robert Graves)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550

We stand about in open places
(from ‘The Rock’ - T.S.Eliot)
40 x 40cm oil and mixed media on canvas £550

Forgotten by the Ark
(from ‘Poetry’ - Billy Collins)
diptych 30 x 30cm x 2 oil and mixed media on canvas SOLD

A weeping mouth and a laughing mouth
oil and mixed media on canvas SOLD

Humbling defeat in the fields
30 x 30cm oil and mixed media SOLD

Prison'd on a watry shore
30 x 30cm oil and mixed media SOLD