The Sacred World
by Mark Tisdale
Title
The Sacred World
Artist
Mark Tisdale
Medium
Photograph - Photo Art
Description
Some times an image is culmination of a lot of different moments of inspiration. In part this surreal almost druidic scene started while watching the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Seeing Westminster Abbey decorated with trees is something I may never forget. Definitely just for that aspect, I would have liked to have been there to see a small forest in the midst of all that old medieval Gothic architecture! Every since then, the idea of massive trees in churches has flitted in and out of my mind.
But another even older influence is the work of the late Scott Mutter. When I bought posters of his work in college, I never imagined I'd one day do anything artistic. Shows how little we know of ourselves sometimes. I still own those posters and I still marvel at those surreal images. Not just for the talent in making them but the ability he had to see the world that way.
The moment that finally made all this click though was recently posting for sale a scene from an old Gothic church I visited in England. It was a scene of a small chapel in St Albans Abbey filled with the afternoon sun and suddenly I thought how interesting it would be to see a tree in that space.
But no, this is not that church in question. The more I looked at the scale of that scene, the less I felt like the great tree I had in my mind would work there. Enter a scene from the Savannah cathedral here in Georgia and it finally all came together.
The final effect is what I saw in my mind's eye when I looked at that beautiful golden light in that old Abbey. It's the combination of a lot of different moments of inspiration, and I'm ultimately going to leave deciphering its meaning up to the viewer. What does it mean to you when you loo at it? That's as important as what it means to me.
Uploaded
September 14th, 2013
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