Varieties of immersion

8 am meetings in London means camping out the night before: a quick trip up to Waterloo, a hotel deal near Earl’s Court, breakfast near Piccadilly ahead of the morning rush.  Things went smoothly: governance, grants, funding falling into place.  By 1pm, immersive work was done and the weekend began.

I’ve been given a year’s membership to the Tate, so wandered over to the Modern to see the Gerhard Richter show, Transformed Visions.  A German visual artist whose abstract works often deal with political issues, this exhibition was more impressionistic.  He’d created blurred murals by pressing a squeegee across the paint, the resulting images evoking natural scenes of reflected skies and running water. 

The ideas was to stand in the middle of them and immerse, but I got more out of staring into the individual works.  The lines and colors resolve into remembered places and associations: teasing out memories as mind tries to interpret the images. 

 

The sun was setting as I left, spotlights on St Paul’s and fluorescents from the City against a luminous blue twilight.  I stood  on the Millennium Bridge and immersed in the detailed reality.

 

The Cambridge weekend, Valentine’s day and afterward, was a relaxed respite.  It was nice to wrap myself in the serenity of the college and the slow traditions of the Orchard.  Current scones and coffee in Grantchester; flowers emerging in the campus gardens: life is richer than any painted representation.