Each year I give my attention to nine calendrical transition points. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days, with Samhain holding two passages, an ending and a beginning. Each transition marks a shift from one perceptual threshold to another, and different kinds of attention become available at each point.
These transition points also relate to certain alchemical operations and to hexagrams from the I Ching, different systems independently mapping something similar about relation and change.
Calendrical Art Chart, Pencil on Graph Paper, 2023.
Being open to seasonal shifts offers a way of becoming familiar with both external and internal patterns of change. Sometimes a correspondence between them can be felt. Unconscious encounters weave their way into painting and writing, months after the actual event. Other times, engaging symbolically; I make and enact rituals that align with the transitional movement itself.
Working calendrically over many years, I recognise a resonance with the making process itself. Sometimes layers of the work attune with the contracted, inward conditions of deep winter; other layers with the expansive, outward-facing quality of June.
At each spiral of the year I become more acquainted with its pattern, seeing further into it and finding new openings. I think of the calendar as an orientation system that supports discovery.