Above and directly below: First of June. Luffness 2. Oil on 12 x 12 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2024

This is the second smaller work in a series exploring a day in June among the ruins of a Carmelite Friary. If you follow this blog you’ll know I’ve been exploring this theme from the start of the year and it’s been an interesting time…

Because I share a bit about my own creative process, it’s all hanging out there for everyone to observe how difficult it is to find the right way to approach a complicated subject!

I began with the idea of exploring a war-traumatised psyche – a dreamlike series exploring archetypal and abstract imagery. It produced these paintings below, quite different from my usual approach. It didn’t come easily but it was interesting as creative exploration.

This was followed by an attempt to depict the atmosphere of the small forest at Luffness, and the strangely affecting presence of an aged effigy depicting a 12th century crusader – almost worn to nothing. Mostly I was just trying to loosen up and find a way forward through a complicated subject – I’m an instinctive painter and although my mind is constantly active, I just can’t paint from a strategic cerebral perspective because my thoughts are rarely conclusive.

It was at this stage that a few people questioned the themes of my work, which brought me to a temporary grinding halt – a good thing since it made me think more deeply about the themes and where I stand regarding subjects such as faith, Christianity and war.

That experience was followed by a day which has now become the title of this series: The first of June in Luffness. There’s no way to summarise that day because so many aspects of it are ongoing parts of life. There’s no conclusion to my relationships to family and friends, the exploration of faith and spirituality, the exploration of art, or the response to violence and war. There’s just the fact that these things exist, ongoing.

I remember back in art college, when we were being taught about post-modernism, we were told that nothing is real, all is subjective. At the time, a good friend said ‘but suffering is real’, meaning that is surely something we can all agree on – an objective truth even though suffering has degrees of difference. How we respond to that is the question. Maybe one of the most useful books for me in recent years has been C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man – all about the concept of objectivity. It’s not an argument for religion or Christianity, it’s a philosophical work which looks at the concept of objectivity and ethics in cultures worldwide. Is there such a thing as a set of objective ideals we all understand to be true?

I’ve always liked Beckett’s lines:

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

I won’t pander to louts is the upshot of all this! Anyway, in these latest paintings I think I’ve found a way to explore the themes. More on this later.