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by ROSIE PHIPPS  In conversation with Rosie PhippsQU “How long does it take to finish a picture?” ROSIE “Well, it depends. There are two ways of looking at it. Contemplation and action. Contemplation belongs to the inner man. Action is an extension of this inwardness. One needs to wait until one is possessed. It is like religion.A painting is not a painting until one is possessed. A religion which lacks possession is not a religion.” QU “Are you saying that a religion is not a religion unless it has a technique of possession attached to it?” ROSIE “Yes. A religion is like painting. It is something to be experienced. This is why it is so uncomfortable to exhibit them. One is turning a private space into a public arena.” John realised that what Frances painted showed both her pain and her pleasure. Was she, and were the pictures, crying out to be looked at and appreciated by others, or was the act of creation enough in itself? QU “I listened to John Cage's 4. 33” at a concert last week. 4.3 minutes of silence. The pianist sat motionless at the piano.Her fingers outstretched and tense ready to play.The cellist raised his right eyebrow indicating to her that she should start. She sat there and did nothing. The cellist, reflecting her silence, sat motionless again with his arms poised as if to strike the first note.” ROSIE “ I know the piece. He is allowing us to experience the silence as a composer, not just a listener.The room was filled with people some of whom were drawn into the silence. It felt like a cathedral. We were held in that state of being that perfect attention creates. ” QU “Yes. He is allowing the audience to experience the power of silence. The possession, and the action that follows from the possession of silence, and from which compositions are made and played.” ROSIE “ What Cage did was to take that private space into a public space. What the audience then did with it was up to them.” QU “ Yes. The silence is there for us all.It comes and goes with one's awareness. One has to listen for it. It can come spontaneously when one is alone, or holding someone one loves, or just by walking in the woods. The point is to be able to recognise it.” ROSIE “There are times in one’s life when one's inner state matches that of the world and there appears to be no way out.There is no starting all over again with a new beginning. One just has to start where one finds oneself, within that silence, and pick up the pieces and start all over again. With art there is always an empty canvas.” QU “What are you working on now? ROSIE “The sensuality of the land. The sheer eroticism of it. It is like flesh. I want to stroke it.I want to grab and mould it.” Recent landscapes by Rosie 250 x 105mm
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by ROSIE PHIPPS  In conversation with Rosie PhippsQU “How long does it take to finish a picture?” ROSIE “Well, it depends. There are two ways of looking at it. Contemplation and action. Contemplation belongs to the inner man. Action is an extension of this inwardness. One needs to wait until one is possessed. It is like religion.A painting is not a painting until one is possessed. A religion which lacks possession is not a religion.” QU “Are you saying that a religion is not a religion unless it has a technique of possession attached to it?” ROSIE “Yes. A religion is like painting. It is something to be experienced. This is why it is so uncomfortable to exhibit them. One is turning a private space into a public arena.” John realised that what Frances painted showed both her pain and her pleasure. Was she, and were the pictures, crying out to be looked at and appreciated by others, or was the act of creation enough in itself? QU “I listened to John Cage's 4. 33” at a concert last week. 4.3 minutes of silence. The pianist sat motionless at the piano.Her fingers outstretched and tense ready to play.The cellist raised his right eyebrow indicating to her that she should start. She sat there and did nothing. The cellist, reflecting her silence, sat motionless again with his arms poised as if to strike the first note.” ROSIE “ I know the piece. He is allowing us to experience the silence as a composer, not just a listener.The room was filled with people some of whom were drawn into the silence. It felt like a cathedral. We were held in that state of being that perfect attention creates. ” QU “Yes. He is allowing the audience to experience the power of silence. The possession, and the action that follows from the possession of silence, and from which compositions are made and played.” ROSIE “ What Cage did was to take that private space into a public space. What the audience then did with it was up to them.” QU “ Yes. The silence is there for us all.It comes and goes with one's awareness. One has to listen for it. It can come spontaneously when one is alone, or holding someone one loves, or just by walking in the woods. The point is to be able to recognise it.” ROSIE “There are times in one’s life when one's inner state matches that of the world and there appears to be no way out.There is no starting all over again with a new beginning. One just has to start where one finds oneself, within that silence, and pick up the pieces and start all over again. With art there is always an empty canvas.” QU “What are you working on now? ROSIE “The sensuality of the land. The sheer eroticism of it. It is like flesh. I want to stroke it.I want to grab and mould it.” Recent landscapes by Rosie 250 x 105mmby ROSIE PHIPPSOnes personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional. Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered. Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
 Birth of the Sunchild - painted around 1976
Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension. The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul. 
by ROSIE PHIPPSOnes personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional. Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered. Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
 Birth of the Sun Child - Painted around 1976
Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension. The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.  Small landscape - Painted 2021 |
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