Some way back...

“Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Pablo Picasso

“I was 19, I was happy, wasn’t sure where I was going. Not much has changed in 30 years.” 

Those were the first lines written on this blog, Touches of sense…

Here I am in 2022, starting a new adventure, a web site, to be entitled: 

Some way back… 

Simon.Ensor.Art

I have always known that I was an artist.

My father used to ask me to illustrate his sermons. 

My mother told the school I painted like Lowry (I didn’t).

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

John Steinbeck.

My art teacher was a great teacher, he would give me excellent marks and then fail to convince me to do some work. 

Others told me to concentrate on more serious subjects.

Below is a drawing I knocked off for homework when I was 16 years old. 

The art teacher’s comments have been nagging me ever since.

I am writing now as a 60 year old Anglo-French artist, driven by a single question:

“What happens when I really put my mind to developing a body of visual art?” 

Some way back…

is a means to document and share responses to that question. 

“An artist without faith is like a painter who was born blind.”

Andrei Tarkovsky

As an artist, I have been working passionately for the past 34 years as an English teacher with thousands of students, exploring the medium and discovering the desire and the means to transform it. I have spent years studying and adapting my actions to the complexity and unpredictability of human interactions and learning. Faith and hard work has enabled this artist to see further…

Art has always been a way to lose myself and to find myself elsewhere.

Along the way, 

I have developed my voice as a blogger in Touches of sense…, connected and collaborated as an educator and as an artist with kindred creative spirits from around the world and employed more or less academic genres to communicate and to publish radical educational messages. The 482 blog posts that I have written since 2010 have become progressively more and more concerned with visual art. The last one, Touches of light, preciously preserved marked some sort of epiphany.

“A page escapes to leafy paths[...]Ephemera rendered eternal.Taking a moment to contemplate. Pause, gaze, breathe in, remember. Moving, losing sight, feeling loss.”

Ever since I was born, I have been acutely aware of the ephemeral nature of life and the infinite value of artistic expression. My father’s work was rhythmed by life’s passing seasons and the rituals of baptism, marriage,and death. My mother shared her love for music, poetry, gardening and nature,and an eye for beauty to be found in driftwood, pebbles, and bric-à-brac. 

Some way back…

Is made up of moments of figurative and abstract meaning making. I find flow and express emotions by letting myself be moved by the moment, the media, making marks intentionally or serendipitously. I am drawn to gaze at distant horizons and to investigate universes glimpsed through close focus. At times, images emerge organically with no apparent source. Certain motifs are  recurrent: nature, landscape, seascapes, mountains, rocks, trees, paths…the objective is always to discover new lands to be able to perceive what lies beyond the self, the subject, the page.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Marcel Proust

Touches of sense… has been a means to map out areas I want to explore and to excavate and to study the reasons why they are important.

Each collection, each image has its back story. Some way back will build upon these foundations. 

Between 2014, and 2018 much of my artistic work was multi-media,collaborative and digital, combining poetry, spoken voice and images in assemblages. I owe much to my friends of #clmooc.

 

Since 2018, starting with “A vine branches wildly…”  I have concentrated my art practice predominantly on watercolor painting, ink, charcoal and graphite drawing. 

The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know and how much you need to learn.

When I speak to those who I consider to be master artists, I am comforted when they agree with this quote of George Leonard:

“We fail to realise that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to fail, and try again. For as long as he or she lives.”

I have stayed true to my path day after day, year after year. 

To my surprise it appears that this is its latest twist. 

I am working now on some way forward.

Simon Ensor

Artist exploring the ephemeral nature of life via figuration & abstraction, flow & scribble, intention & serendipity.

P.S.

I have no idea whether this will be the last post in Touches of sense...

It has been quite a while since I felt moved to write here.

The words just wouldn't come...

Touches of light, preciously preserved.

A page escapes to leafy paths.

An instant of communion with a Cézanne.

A5 sketchpad, framing expression of infinite dimensions.

Kilometres becoming scaled in centimetres.

Touches of light preciously preserved.

Unfocused focus washing weariness away.

Ephemera rendered eternal.

Taking a moment to contemplate.

Pause, gaze, breathe in, remember.

Moving, losing sight, feeling loss.

Remembrance.

That moment.

That minutiae.

Words tramp through grass like Wellington Boots.

Stop stomping around.

Present movement moments evaporate.

Fine edge, broad sweep, fanned lines.

Found in nature. 

Lost in flow.

Time absent in presence.

Touches of light preciously preserved.

 

Playgrounds 4 Anger.

[RUSHES.]

Kids will see-saw.

See-saw-seen. Irregular verbs. 

Saw I II III. 

WTF are we here 4?

TEXT BOOK horror 

Franchises Disenfranchise!

PUnctuATION.

NO POLITICS!! CORRupTion

CAPITAL ERRS

WE don’t need NO EDUCATION. 

Kids still see-saw

Walls will be gamed

Kills will be famed.

SO

WTF are we here 4?

Are we just another brick?

COP-outs-US?

Hit the bars.

The rounds on me.

school walls, school boards, 

hands up, put your hands up,

just one more round?

don’t mind if I do.

CHEERS

STOP-GAP-GUY

long term attention hold-ups, 

who’s the hostages?

while those kids nap.

high stakes stakeholders test,

randomised roulette,

roll the loaded dice,

make a loan

debt 4 life

short term contracts,

insecurity? weaponised.

bite the bullet

security standards 

 prisons or schools?

Public service? Announcement.

KNOW your (copy)RIGHTS?, 

knowledge locked behind paywalls…

So I researched 

and found...

.

What is the point of research if it is hardly read, especially by those it affects the most?

Broadened horizons. Focused, cooperative analysis.

Broadened horizons.There is a story line, I am struggling to map.

I am living at a different rhythm, walking along the sea-shore, broadening my horizons, breathing in the sea-air...through a mask. 

At least, I have got away.

I'm on holiday.

I take my time to paint wide swathes of land and sea then focus on details. 

Board-walks, fishing tackle, barbed wire in the grass.

I alternate between mindful artistic meditation and broadening my intellectual knowledge.

I am taking my time.

I have been taking the time to reimerse myself in methodology - Nexus Analysis (Scollon and Scollon)

I have been taking the time to review and adapt such methodology to my particular research context.

I know that I am writing this in order to guide my actions with my friends towards the creation of a simple but multi-voiced storyline.

Focussed analysis informed by broadened and diverse perspectives

I alternate between focusing on moments of interactions captured in photos of educational contexts here and there, the stories and diverse perspectives of the photographers and the people who appear framed.  

.

I must, therefore take the time to work with different perspectives of the same stories, the same images. 

The work will be essentially limited by the time that we have but we must start with inclusivity as its guide. 

It will be a cumulative, iterative process. 

There will be... inevitably... be... ellipsis...

Masked, gagged, blindfolded.

The masks are a minor inconvenience, the political measures put in place by governments always hit the poor first... 

In no way is a global pandemic a "great leveler".

Impact of COVID-19 on the Education Sector in Nepal: Challenges and Coping Strategies

Intermittent connections

We are hanging onto our cooperation despite failing electrical supplies and internet signals, school closures, holidays and natural disasters.

Our storyline must reveal complexity through its simplicity.

It is only a start but we must work on preparing the ground.

The foundations must be solid and easily identified.

It must be clear, it must make one essential point.

This is research for action...activist research.

I, we, are not alone, we are not working for academic career impact.

Research for action, research as action.

Another life story connects,

THIS < from ⁦@jmeblommaert⁩ « Looking back: What was important? – Ctrl+Alt+Dem » via ⁦@sharmashyam⁩ #rhizo14 #clmooc #digped ⁦@EurocallLang ⁦@UNICollaborate⁩ ⁦@A_L_T⁩ #highered #digpedlab https://t.co/mUZTKjeNZo

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) August 5, 2020

shared ironically by a Nepalese expat friend, Shyam Sharma and then reshared by Kabi Paudel in Katmandu.

A major research influence, Jan Blommaert, terminally ill, shares a testament to what matters.

"In a world in which knowledge is at once more widely available than ever before, and more exclusive and elitist than ever before, knowledge is a battlefield and those professionally involved in it must be aware of that. Speaking for myself: a neutral stance towards knowledge is impossible, for it would make knowledge anodyne, powerless, of little significance in the eyes of those exposed to it. Which is why we need an activist attitude, one in which the battle for power-through-knowledge is engaged, in which knowledge is activated as a key instrument for the liberation of people, and as a central tool underpinning any effort to arrive at a more just and equitable society. I have been a knowledge professional, indeed. But understanding what I have done as a professional is easier when one realizes the activism which, at least for me, made it worthwhile being a professional." Jan Blommaert

Global discourses local translations...

I am questioning the international, national, local economic, political, educational, socio-cultural discourses which are the more or less visible backgrounds, or frames to the photos and stories.  

I have immersed myself in Nepalese history, authoritarian regimes, bloody civil war, nascent democracy, Hindu religion, educational reform, central control and decentralization policies, current  economic and social realities of people in rural and urban areas, trying to capture some landmarks to guide my reflection.  

Ethnic and linguistic diversity, institutionalized caste and gender discrimination, chronic corruption, foreign interference and "aid", economic migration or expatriation according to the social status of the individual. 

The Anthropocene (/ænˈθrɒp.əˌsiːn, -ˈθrɒp.oʊ-/ ann-THROP-ə-seen, -⁠THROP-oh-)^[1] is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Common hopes and fears for a better more equitable, more environmentally sustainable future.

This is essential to the storyline: we are interconnected, we are one with the ecosystem.

Hinduism, amongst other religious traditions speaks of  this indisputable truth.

We are one with the planet, not in anyway apart or above it. 

What is the human cost of modernity, discourses of "progress", "sustainable development"?

I am aided in my reflection by my friend Paul Prinsloo who shares:

Andreotti:  Postcolonial perspectives in research on higher education for sustainable development. 

It contains a short poem.

Promises of progress, promises of equity, growing inequality and people who are expendable.

'We have abandoned the poor': slums suffer as Covid-19 exposes India's social divide https://t.co/b4lmUlJXaa

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) August 3, 2020

US & THEM

Vast financial investment enable photos from space, illustrating the vulnerability of all and the absurd hubris of the privileged few. 

Photos on earth show that a hard rain falls harder on those with less means.

We live in a world where some lives are valued less than others.  

We live a world where some voices are valued less than others.

We live a world where some languages are valued less than others.

We live a world where some passports have less value than others.

There is no hope of equitable change unless we face the facts.

Uncertain paths...beyond the horizon

Only six years ago I had no idea that my path would lead me to such discussions, these reflections, these actions. 

I have little idea of what really drives these actions apart from what I have always had: an insatiable curiosity to know what lies beyond the horizon and persistent indignation.

How many instants have I captured in these pages of myself looking at or beyond a wall, gazing at or beyond distant horizons?  

Promises, promises, promises.

I have been taking time to learn about the relationships between global educational resources, funding, and local educational policies, pronouncements and actions particularly as regards which data has currency, what gives leverage to those who have their hands on such levers and the disconnection between seductive declarations and cruel realities. 

We live in  world where it is often not what you know but who you know which counts.

 

It seems that all too often politicians are now not speaking for those who they represent but to those who represent sources of influence....prestige...money.

I am learning about the disconnect between political movements and leaders who take up the causes of the oppressed, of the voiceless and then use their despair as fuel for violent revolution which gives them the leverage to gain access to prestige....money.

I am constantly trying to avoid distracting my attention and attempting to focus on this our storyline.

[All that I see around the world, are the same beautiful declarations of those who are able to access stages and the same lies, the same violence, the same absence of solidarity for others who are left feeling forgotten, frustrated.] 

This storyline involves the young people who care, who believe and struggle for change.

#Monsoon2020 Aide à la population Népalais sous la mousson https://t.co/VveeVaiAyk

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) August 1, 2020

They believe in solidarity, they believe in the importance of children to be seen and heard regardless of their social backgrounds, religions, genders. 

They work to become changemakers in their communities, on their terms, not just for them but for us all. 

This story has ONE simple message. 

I=0  [alone I am zero]