Catch a Falling Star

Catch a Falling Star — 5 small works for Christmas 2024

I find it intriguing to trace the first spark that ignites a body of work — how potent memories, seemingly unconnected find a way to connect and in doing so something new is brought into being. This is the essence of all creation — in most instances making a surprise entrance with perfect timing.

I have always been drawn to the alchemy of light and colour. My first memory of this was my art teacher’s kitchen window which I walked past on my way home from school. Glass shelves filled the window — every shelf displaying her collection of coloured glass — wondrous and glowing like a jewel box as the late afternoon sun sank into the sky over Adelaide.

Much later in life following the death of my Mother I packed her precious crystal into boxes and with great care brought it from where I was raised in Adelaide
to my home on the Gippsland Lakes in Eastern Victoria.

In those days of grief I Iived in the face of the weather — a westerly aspect, high on an escarpment overlooking a wide body of water which mirrored the vast canopy of sky above. As I unpacked her crystal I noticed how it would catch the light especially at those liminal times of day when the veil between the worlds grew thin. In those moments of stillness her spirit made itself felt — a radiant presence merging with the light — magnified and multiplied by the facets of her crystal.

And so it was that I discovered a new language for my artist’s eye. From my studio high on the escarpment I became a seeker of light. Patterns and phenomena that can only be seen with altitude were made visible. Sunsets would arrive on the shiver of a zephyr, transforming the surface of the lake into a geometry of liquid light — reflecting and refracting — a zig zag pattern of dazzle and squint. The sky in the evenings became a deep velvet canvas — a map of the heavens illuminated with the piercing brilliance of stars and the passage of the moon in its differing phases — waxing and waning.

These works are the beginning of this exploration — crystalline patterns plucked from darkness glowing with colour and light.

As I write these notes and memories it is Christmas. I am holding in my thoughts a time long, long ago when three wise men followed a star to a place of humble birth and in the manner of things seemingly unconnected but connected I remember John Lennon’s song

— So this is Christmas. . . .

Jo Sabey