Fish Circus...

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It’s a gloomy old day. Windy, wet, and cold - the sort of day for staying indoors or (if you’re bonkers like me) going for a walk on a beach somewhere. Still, it isn’t as gloomy as yesterday – I’ll try to be lighter today.

I love wrapping up warm (to quote Mothers everywhere), making ready to battle the wind and rain, and then sallying forth into the Weather (capital intentional). I enjoy the ‘struggle’ against the wind, rain, and whichever other elements are available in order to reach whatever goal takes my fancy (as long as the ‘struggle’ isn’t too struggley and the ‘goal’ has a nice warm fire at the end of it).

Yes, I like to sally forth.

‘Sallying forth’ – what a great term. It means ‘to set out in a sudden, energetic or violent manner often with an uncertain outcome’. Well, I’m not too sure about the sudden, energetic or violent part of the definition (I like to take my time when I’m sallying) but I love the idea of an uncertain outcome. Exciting isn’t it! Free in the wind and rain, a little unsure of where you are going or what you might find when you get there. It’s in that uncertainty that the anticipation and promise lays - or so I’m told. I won’t dwell on the uncertainty element though, it may take me off on a tangent.

Sometimes I sally forth along the beach at Porth Dinllaen towards the Ty Coch pub. The pub (which by the way is almost incidental to my sallying) is actually built on the beach in a beautiful little bay surrounded by mountains - it’s a great place for a pint (or two). We often sally there on New Years day. Once I found a long dried pipefish on the sand. I’ve kept it - it looks like a cross between a snake and a sea-horse. We’ve found a few pipe fish over the years - on various sallies along numerous Welsh beaches - and I’ve made them into a kind of sea sculpture (I really must post a photograph of it).

This brings me to what I set out to write about (at last)… Eileen Agar. God, I ramble sometimes!

Eileen Agar is number ten in my list of top ten surrealists, I’ll get around to them all eventually I expect, but let’s start with Eileen. She was a fervent beachcomber, often using the flotsam and jetsam she found washed up on the shore in her work. ‘Fish Circus’ features a real starfish that she found on a sally in 1939 near Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. She’s pinned it to the painting with a large blue drawing pin and painted and collaged other sea creatures along with some inevitable surrealist chequerboard patterns to the work. I don’t know what it is about surrealists and chequerboard – maybe it’s a perspective thing - perhaps they just like chequerboard.

She used ‘found objects’ in her sculptures as well. ‘Marine Object’ is one of my favourites, and yes, I know that it’s simple and anyone could have made it, but in the context of its time…

All in all, I think ‘Fish Circus’ and ‘Marine Object’ are lovely, light, whimsical works that on a grey day like today, and after a black day like yesterday, lift my spirits and make me want to sally forth along the nearest beach to see what I can find to ‘do’ something with.

How about you? Up for a sally? I’ve even arranged it so that you can do your sallying from the comfort of your own armchair…

- Here’s the Ty Coch webcam.
http://www.tycoch.co.uk/Java1.html

- And sally forth virtually along the beach at Porth Dinllaen on a sunny day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/walks/pages/porthdinllaen.shtml?1

Better still… sally forth along there sometime. It’s a great place in any weather and you never know what you may find.

Chin up! Summers just around the corner and I’m off to see Cirque du Soleil tonight which is a completely different kind of circus to Eileen's fishy one.