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If you have been visiting this thoroughly obscure blog for any length of time, you will know by now how crazy I am about the beauty in decay; the fabulous subtleties to be found in rusting iron and fading paint. Were I an artist who knew how to mix colors and create textures using brushes and canvas, I would dream of creating a surface like this first image here, purely abstract flows of joyously nuanced colors which perfectly complement. But I am not talented in the least with brush or chalk or pencil, I have only my camera to help me make the paintings I would like to hang on my walls. This one may just have to be printed out in large format sometime soon, I think I could gaze at it for hours on end. How about you ? Does it do anything for you ? What on earth is it, anyway ??? Well, just continue down to the next two, to reveal the secret. And let me wish you a wonderful weekend in the meanwhile.
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I was simply floored when I came across this rusting heart in a cemetery in a tiny village somewhere in the Oise, France. I think it deserves to be preserved exactly as it is. To let it continue to rust in the weather and finally crumble and disappear, would be criminal. At least these photos will remain.
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Posts
35 comments:
This is very nice pictures, colours are great, greetings,
I haven't been following your blog long, but that heart is my favorite of the images you've posted, yet.
Well, that and the buses from Syria.
Enjoy your weekend, as well. I hope to see you stop by Girl Wizard again, some time. It's not often I get Carroll quoted back to me.
Such wonderful colours, Owen. A large print on the wall to be stared at would be marvellous. Trouble is, you would spend so long in front of it, you wouldn't have time to get out and about to capture more stunning images!
Not sure how to react to a heart motif on the gates to a cemetary.
I find it somewhat disturbing. I'm used to skulls and bones as a leitmotif to corpse repositories, not soft, pumping blood enriched hearts!
Could it be an (here)after thought?
That said, the colours are mesmerising.
Wow. Proof that nature's palatte is richer than man's imagination.
Une tres belle histoire de coeur Owen..patinée, colorée, un peu érodée par le temps...magnifique..
Bises..:o)
Tu as raison, les couleurs sont fabuleuses !
Pour mon mur, je choisirais la seconde.
Et bon week end à toi ! :)
It's beautiful, Owen - well-worn, cast-off but still sending its message. Quite wonderful symbolism here.
Were it not on a cemetery gate, I would have thought it was a love letter for you and your love for these wonderfully weathered surfaces.
Abstract art at its best.
Owen, I love the combination of colors. The oxidation of the heart is a perfect metaphor for a cemetery. A great capture.
oh yes.
i am drawn to images like this top one.
wonderous colour fields merging with textures so fine you want to touch.
~robert
Coucou Owen, this is a very beautiful heart. It looks like something that has been carefully made - painted with red rimmed edges and flowy watercolour in the middle. I love art created by nature. Or in this case, with the aid of nature. YES, a large format of this to gaze at is totally understandable.
:-)
The progression through your photos led to a wonderful surprise... a heart so lovingly decorated by nature. You should definitely put this one in a large format... Just stunning!
Bises,
Genie
Hi everybody, am really happy you have enjoyed these... just to clarify, in fact this heart was not on the gates to the cemetery, but on the wrought iron cross of one of the tombs in the graveyard. I think it probably once had a ceramic surface on it, with writing memorializing the person(s) buried there, but the ceramic surface probably fell off long ago, leaving the metal support. I will post a photo soon of other hearts from the same cemetery which still have the ceramic surface on them. In fact, if you click on "Cemeteries" in the index list at bottom right on this page, and scroll down through past posts, you may be able to find some similar hearts, if my memory serves me well (which it might not at my advanced age...) :-)
That really is beautiful. I can see why you were so drawn to it; the shape, color, textures, age, and the reason for it's existence culminate to make these images a great treasure.
I so appreciate your artistry with your camera, as this is truly a thing of great beauty. I sure want to reach out and touch it, but the images are so tactile I am satisfied. The whole gate (or whatever it is welded onto) needs to be preserved too because the scroll work is gorgeous. Is there a process available that preserves rusting items from decaying further? I hope someone in charge of the cemetery might see this post and take action.
feels as if it remained honest throughout the whole time.
please have a good sunday.
daily athens
Is anyone else having connection problems ?
I sign in to Blogger but my connection name does not appear at upper right of blog page as usual. But worse, though I am signed in on my page, and can leave a comment here, when I go to other pages, I can't leave comments because it wants me to sign in, but then won't let me sign in. This has been going on for three days now... BLOGGER strikes again ! A marvellous GLITCH causing immense frustration... ah, patience, patience, patience...
What a beautiful heart! The colors are wonderful.
WonderfulPictures
ThankYouForSharing
but you are an artist owen - you manage to capture these amazing images and share them with us all.......
the heart is so lovely
perhaps the beauty to be found in aging and dissolving?
And YES!! I am also having trouble with Blogger1 I can't sign in to my blog. I can post and leave comments elsewhere, but not on my own blog. I'll have to make up an alias.
And I heart hearts! This one is exquisite with the wrought iron frame and spirals (life never ends?) and the streaks of turquoise and copper. I also like the mysterious, rusted porthole below... ?
There is no better artist than Nature. The rusting, corroding, eroding, ever-changing aspect of her fierce beauty is apparent in countless aspects of her creations; perhaps best exemplified in magnicificently rusting metal. Nature transforming the man-made.
I am in absolute agreement with you concerning the beauty of the tones and textures of this example you captured digitally. The rusted piece is, in and of itself, a work of art. Captured by your eye and camera, another manifestation of that art. It would certainly make a gorgeous canvas to grace a wall in anyone's home.
The rust colours and patterns in this piece remind me of what potters try to capture with the raku process; those rich jewel tones and metallic brilliance that leave me enraptured.
The craftsman who made this heart-centred curlicued cross could not have planned a better evolution of his work into this magnificent specimen of colour and texture.
My heart joins yours, Owen, in its lust for rust.
Yes, many error and unavailability messages. It's not easy holding my tongue--takes two hands! As for the image...Beautiful. Corrosion and decay(perhaps Blogger is feeling it, too?).
I thought it was one of your wonderful weathered walls at first - what a marvellous find - I am sure Louciao can do something wonderfully artistic with it - let's wait and see!! Greetings from Mexico
One and all, I thank you from the bottom of my own slightly rusted heart. Maybe this could have been the tin man's heart in the Oz stories... A lust for rust, yes, that about sums it up, thanks for that, dear Lynne.
And again thank you one and all. It simply amazes me no end that you good people have found your way here, and that some of you even come back more than once... I am very lucky indeed. When I started this blog going on three years ago, it seemed like about the only way I was ever going to share any of my work, such as it is, with a wider audience. It has taken on a life of it's own, I am running to keep up... or hopping rather, on my toad legs.
:-)
By taking this photo you have preserved this heart exactly as it is.
Great post. I do love the colors, and this pretty heart.
Rusted to perfection and beautifully captured!
Owen - you ARE an artist! I used to think artists had to physically create something, i.e. a painting or drawing or sculpture or ... and it's only been in the past few years that I realize an artist is one who SEES the art - everyday items become tangible art when captured in our lenses. I love your rusty captures, and this rusty heart is beautiful art - it makes MY heart crumble!
Great captures, Mr. Toad-Man!
You are right...to let this decay away is a travesty! I would make a print and hang it up as well! Somehow I have come to collect heart necklaces...this would make a beautiful addition...
coeur corrompu?
What a great find that spot was. I'm in awe of your photography...
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