Forest Bed. 2012
Carving in wood is my passion. I love the way the grain leads the eye along the wood, turning at knots, inspiring a form as the surface gathers and twists, suggesting shapes that might be animal, plant or figure. I am inspired by our carving heritage in stone and wood, as seen in churches across the country, particularly Romanesque and medieval carving, and the Jacobean love of decorative surface.
A bed explores many ideas - of sleep, and dreams, and also of refuge and rest. A bed is the place where so much of human existence is played out - one is born in a bed, and might die there. Life is conceived while making love in a bed, and it is a place of nurture and rest. We can lie there in thought, to day dream and listen to sounds around us. We can sleep, and journey to places unknown and unremembered in waking.
I want my carved bed to invite the traveller or visitor to stop awhile, and listen to what is there. Gradually you become a part of the place, just another being, witnessing the presence of other beings: trees, birds, beetles, and the myriad creatures and plants that make up this small part of our wonderful universe.
Sleeping here at night might be daunting, but I try to make my peace with the darkness. Sometimes there is a moon and the glimmer of stars. I always wake refreshed, with the thought that I have been accepted by the wood during the dark hours. I am safe. I watch the dawn light strengthen, and the leaves and birds coming back to life.
March 14 2012. The men boards
Where did this man come from, heavy with sleep as he sprawls across the head board? He is young, hunky, my female friends will say. His sex lies softly, asleep too, and his hand falls down the bed post, reaching out in his sleep towards the ground.
But he didn’t come alone. At the same time as I drew him, another young man came, asleep also, on the board below him. Are they together? Do they know each other? Do they imagine that they lie on bunks, and will sleep away their time for all time, as they flaunt their male bodies so beautifully and carelessly? I‘m not sure that they are aware of their situation, arriving so freely into the narrative of my bed. They are unaware, vulnerable possibly to what might happen to the bed, and will be carried along in its journey whether they like it or not. Should they fear this?
Will they ever wake? I will carve them as they are, asleep. But they might dream, or maybe they will feign sleep, and listen to what is going on around them, amused perhaps, puzzled perhaps. They will never leave.
Jane Mowat.
Forest Bed.
Videos.
2/4/12.
I am in a pine forest. It is at the top of a hill, and here the trees gather the sighing of every breeze and the sighs of every soul from miles around, and stir them together in their swaying. I look up, and in the stirring gap between the tops of the trees I see the bright sky. It is trying to speak, but its sound is drowned by the sound of the branches. It is a dumb light, that also cannot penetrate the darkness around me, a place of shadows, and beyond the shadows, of night.
A deer appears not far away, pauses and watches me. As I do not move, it walks on, followed by a second deer, and then a third. They merge into the shades of tree trunks and tree gaps, making no sound.
There are no baying hounds, there is no terror. I am not Artemis, watched by another, whom I will have to condemn to death. There is no pool where I might have bathed. I am a shadow myself, a watcher, and I am waiting to see what will happen next.
Then I see the swimmers. There is water after all, cascading silently, and two figures half submerged. Their hair streams behind them, rippling with the current and the ripples run across their bodies, distorting them below the surface. There is no sound, although I see that they are calling to each other, invigorated by the stream that gushes and runs, flowing out of the darkness and on back into the darkness, barely catching a glimmer from the sky that is dumb, and barely stirred by the wind that waves and sighs so strongly around me.
I wrap my blanket closer around me. I cannot sleep, and listen to the orchestra of sound from pine branches that stroke the air.
2/4/12.
As I lie in bed, a figure flies past me, between the trees. He is intent on the reason for his journey, and does not see me lying there, bemused, intrigued. I know he is man, and not man.
At this moment he is on a journey, seeking a soul that is longing and lost, and is sought by another who longs for him. He will have a message, perhaps a word of comfort, for this shadow-soul. He will show him the world as it is now, and help him to take root somewhere in his other world, where shadows and souls and ghosts wander in confusion.
They are looking for a road that will take them back, to somewhere familiar, back to their loved ones and to their beloved land. However, every breath of air moves them further, like a curse, always further from life and from love. They must take faith from this not man, who flies the spirit world, as he has the wisdom to know that their life of shadows is now a life of longing, and the warmth of fire, of the sun-warmed earth, of living bodies that laugh and breathe is no longer theirs.
‘Free yourselves’, he will tell them. ‘Let go of your longings and dreams, and become as the wind. Let the rain be your tears, and let your path be as haphazard and uncertain as it always was, before you were human, before you were born. You were free spirits then, and you are returning to that freedom.