Episode 2.1

Welcome to The Phosphene Catalogue no. # 15021
We see light where others see only darkness.

My name is Jude Francis-Sharp, and it is an honour, reader, to return to the position of Curator of the Collection.

Long-time subscribers may know me already from my previous work at The Catalogue, or perhaps my latest exhibition in my small Whitechapel gallery in Mulberry St.
I studied in Paris at the Académie De La Grande Chaumière, lower campus. Where, in addition to my own weekly subscription to The Catalogue, I often whiled away the time between my studies browsing the archive of previous issues, dating back as far as the turn of the century.

I must thank and congratulate my colleague, and the Catalogue's resident historian, Warrick Blackwood for his work during my absence. I read each issue of The Catalogue with great interest and amusement during my recent time away "studying" in Edinburgh.

My hope for future issues is to apply my newly acquired perspective from the Edinburgh College of Art, the better to serve you and all clients of The Catalogue.

There is a great deal I must show you.

Side A: Huijia

Lot No. 21848. "huijia" (回家), Li Zhen, Painted during the Last Century of the Ming Dynasty. An 8' Vertically Rolled Ink Wash Painting, 2' Wide in Black Ink

This beautiful example of minimal Far Eastern painting is available for viewing in The Pentire Room. Please call our office and ask, politely, for Morwenna.

Huijia, Warrick informs me, translates approximately to "Homecoming", the feeling of relaxation and anticipation of rest upon re-entering your house after slightly longer than you would like away from it.

Li Zhen has expertly captured the sensation of homecoming in this piece, which I feel clearly, as I stand now in front of it.

The painting is of an abstract mountainous landscape, with a 3-line Chinese poem written at the top-right, with a large red seal as the artist's mark.
My colleague Katherine Wilson-Baines, attempting to retain the syllabic symmetry of the original, has translated the poem into a haiku, which reads:

Which I think is sublime, don't you?

This is how I felt, upon returning to Flood street, off the King's Road in Chelsea, standing in front of Rossetti House, after many months out of town.
My first week back in London had been spent here at The Catalogue, the backlog of paperwork a sharp reminder that not everyone is as suited to the position as me!

Upon entering Rossetti House, I was surprised to find Jo Croft at home without her partner David Isaac, the two had previously been inseparable. But as she helped me carry my luggage up the familiar 4 flights of wide, dark-wooden stairs, she explained he was working a late shift as a bartender at the Savoy.

My attic room was almost exactly as I left it. I don't think Warrick spent more than a few nights here, I doubt the "vibrant atmosphere" of the weekly "Opening" parties suited him.

I stood in the centre of the room, as close to the window as the sharply slanted roof would permit, with my large trunk containing all my possessions next to me.
Jo closed the door behind her, mentioning tea in the lounge in 10 minutes.

I thought I hated this house?
I DID hate this house!
But... standing there, it felt like home.
Why did it feel like home?

Morwenna, thank you for re-appointing me as curator. That's more understanding than I expected, given our parting on good, but, I thought, strictly professional terms.
Sometimes, in quiet moments in my Edinburgh box room in Melville street, after my studies were done for the day, I thought you were... ?angry when I handed you my resignation. There was something in your face that I can't describe.

I see that I was mistaken, and I'm grateful.
Not just for the job, of course.

Thank you for rescuing me.
I owe you my life.

Hanging in The Pentire Room, "Huijia" is daunting.
Occupying most of the vertical space on the wall, I believe it is best appreciated from afar (I think this of my own work, but that's for other reasons). Fight this instinct, reader, should you make an appointment to view this painting. The devil is in the details.

As with most examples of Ink Wash painting, most of the fabric is left raw and unpainted.
The long and confident brushstrokes, that define the rolling mountain range, seem to only exist to frame the negative space between them.
Look closely. What do you see hiding in the unpainted valleys and foothills?

There is a person depicted here in "Huijia".
This surprises most viewers of the piece, it certainly did me.

The awesome, barren, daunting scale of the work belies the modesty of the subject.
Homecoming, we translate the title as, so homecoming,
there.
must.
be.

Lean close to the bottom-left corner of the fabric. There is a figure!
Painted with barely a graze of the brush on the canvas, a single stroke, 1 or 2 inches across the empty void at the bottom of the mountain.

But it is not a void.
Context and, perhaps, a little imagination, make it clear.
The lower 2' of the painting is a lake.

There are no ripples visible here, nor shoreline, nor flotsam, nothing to give the impression of water.

But the person is a boatman.
With a single brushstroke, Li Zhen shows us a person wearing a wide hat, bent over and holding a pole, pushing the thick black line of a boat across the lake.

I see a bundle of something at the figure's feet - provisions, perhaps, for their long journey? Not much is left, if so.

This person is nearly home.

There is not a single mountain here in silhouette, as one might depict The Matterhorn. In this painting, we are shown layers of peaks that continue on, becoming less and less distinct, until the very air between us and them obscures the farthest from our sight.

The skill on show here is astonishing. The method that, I believe, is in use, is common to watercolour painting, my favoured medium.

One paints the closest in the mountain range first, and, as the ink reserves of the brush become used and diluted with repeated charges of water, progressively further landmarks are defined.

The result, as shown in the master work, is a feeling of DEPTH. The rolling landscape becomes less distinct, the contrast of the ink on the page lessening, until the artist is painting almost homeopathically, with only water.

The density of clear air, seeming to the non-artist to be transparent and unnoticeable, has been shown for what it is:
A subtle natural effect that in capturing it on the canvas, is harnessed to make the invisible, visible.

Intermission

Side B: Sirens

Lot No. 23011. "Sirens", Sarah Porter 1972, Oil on Canvas, no Frame

I first had the pleasure of viewing "Sirens" at the Brighton Guise Show. (I forget which of the Lanes' basement galleries I found it in, my memory is filled with the crashing waves that this painting visited upon me)
Indeed, when I first stood in front of it, I was overcome by the sound of the turbulent sea washing over me.
I am not being metaphorical in my description, Reader:
As soon as I stepped into the small basement that served as gallery, I heard the fury of waves crash into that rock from across the room and smelled the salt spray of the ocean, and something else, darker, and bitter.

The canvas is 3' wide, 4.5' tall, and has yet to be mounted. After successful bidding, we can offer our framing services, should the buyer require it. Telephone our the office and ask for our framer, Mina Olivia Copland.

We have appraised and sold a number of Miss Porter's works, including the first painting that brought her to international recognition, "Lot no. 8091". Readers may view that powerful piece at Lord Dean Aldwick's estate in Surrey, who won it at our auction for a considerable sum earlier this year.

(1.8M pounds, Morwenna, can you IMAGINE?!)

I understand Lord Aldwick welcomes fellow connoisseurs, but make sure to bring appropriate footwear, the floor around the painting is treacherous.

No longer a newcomer to the scene, Miss Porter's artwork may well be familiar to many of our readers.
After stealing the show at The Brighton Fringe Below, and a notable appearance at the Edinburgh Midnight Hall, she has now set up in London, at my gallery on Mulberry Street.
Indeed, we are sharing the gallery space, and it has been most satisfying to work together.

Oh, Morwenna: I'll be finishing a little early today, I need to pick up an order from my shirtmaker on Germyn street. (They have my measurements from before my impromptu sabbatical in Edinburgh, so I telephoned my order earlier this week)
I want to look my best tonight. I'll tell you more about Sarah over tea. She is... fascinating.

I really enjoyed our late-night chats around the hearth in your basement room.
It was so kind of you to offer the room to me. I did need a safe house, after the trouble I got myself into in Edinburgh.
I must have looked such a MESS when I arrived - Warrick Blackwood, Katherine Wilson-Baines, and Mina Olivia Copland saw the bruises, I think. I wasn't in any state to hide them as you guided me through the building down to this room.

It was almost exactly as I had imagined: Roaring fire, cosy bed, and I'm furious you kept Nimue secret all this time. She slept at the foot of the bed, and I couldn't persuade her to leave the room during the week I was there.
(Though I occasionally lost her, or perhaps, she lost herself, in the way black cats often can)

Thank you, again.

The composition of "Sirens" is of a solitary, jagged, rock, jutting out of the ocean in the bottom-right of the painting, on which are three slender sirens; beautiful mermaids wearing only seaweed and shells braided through their hair.
As with nearly all of Miss Porter's work, the subject here is the sea. Wide and imposing, the crests of the ocean swell made translucent by a solitary shaft of sunlight piercing the dark clouds.

The sirens are beautiful, yes, with red lips and bright eyes, but as depicted, would not tempt a sailor to risk drowning, I feel.
Though I don't doubt the Artist's ability to draw a pleasing feminine form, she breaks with tradition here.

The sirens' limbs are outstretched towards the centre of the painting, with hooked fingers, their sharp teeth bared, and even a raised fist from one highest up on the rock.
Their eyes are wide and staring, they look furious, fearsome, or, perhaps... fearful?

In my first viewing, as I stepped closer to the work, more detail was revealed.
Taking care as I approached (the floor was slick with seawater), I was able to look closer.

My impression of the sirens on the rock changed, on examination.
Yes, there was a wildness to them, as there can be in many creatures, and, indeed, some women.
But in this depiction, their anger had a FOCUS:

There is a shadow in the centre of the frame; a dark shape floating just under the surface of the water.

Do you see it?
Follow the shaft of sunlight that lights up the two cresting waves in the centre down and to the left.
It is not easy to identify this shape.
It could be a mass of seaweed, or perhaps even some broken-off section of wood, drifting in from one of the artist's other paintings.

But lean in, reader, when you view this in our gallery.
(Don't slip on the wet floor, mind)
Do you see the delicate lines drifting away from the left side of that dark, floating shape?
What is that?

I see not seaweed, nor some "jellyfish" (as some "experts" have committed to print), but HAIR.

When I saw this detail, I stepped back in shock. I looked around myself in the small subterranean gallery. I don't believe others saw this detail as I had. Patrons paused, appreciating the masterfully captured sea, and moved on, without themselves being much moved in the appreciation.

The sirens' mouths are full of sharp teeth, yes, but they are bared because they are wailing at their lost sister.
The tallest of the three has her fist raised, not in threat, but grasping a small dark red flower.
It is easy to miss, as I had, initially.

A hooked lance of metal punctures the dead siren, so perfectly aligned with the shaft of light piercing the wave above her that it is almost impossible to tell the two bright lines apart.

The seawater that drips from "Sirens" canvas is stained by dark ink.
The painting is not monochromatic.

The flower is red.
Their lips are red.
The sea is red.

There is blood in the water.

CREDITS