Contemplative art offers hope in uncertain times

“The trees bare wintered souls, bend to the stroke of a friendly hand. She needs to test her strength, her skill: theirs is a hushed exchange of trust; the hazel is her talisman; her touchstone is the larch.”

So writes the Shetlandic poet, Christine de Luca, in Garden Full of Snow, the opening poem in a sequence of 12. The verses were written as part of a collaboration with the artist Victoria Crowe, whose dozen paintings match de Luca’s words, in title and mood.

Christina Jansen of the Scottish Gallery describes the publication that accompanies this exhibition as “a book of contemplation” and I can find no better way of conveying the sense of this literary-visual sequence.

The tone of these works is generally wintery, tentative, fragile. They were created during 2020 when Crowe was recovering from a serious illness, during lockdown. The poem and painting, The Amazing Clarity of the Night Skies, best tell of the mood of that time, barely a year ago, when traffic was stilled and air pollution much reduced: “A night-soaked sky slips into lapis lazuli, / fights the final incandescence of that April sun. /

The days then — unseasonally dry and sunny —/ were full of news spooling numbers of the dead.”

Each poem and image, which celebrate the trees visible from the artist’s studio in West Linton, are exquisitely crafted eulogies.

The snow and bare branches are more than literal, conjuring the artists’ state of mind; the trees are familiars, living presences which they imbue with deeper meanings and significance.

They are more than mere botany, for they represent both the fragility of human existence and the perilous state of our Earth.

In terms of craft, poeticism and artistry this collection recalls the work of Sylvia Plath where, in Winter Trees, she explored some of the themes contemplated by Crowe and de Luca.

Plath’s sequence was also written in a time of national crisis (the savagely cold winter of 1963). Unlike Plath, who was unable to find a way out of her despair, this contemporary duo generate hope out of uncertainty.

Until May 29