Defining my Sublime Aesthetic

Sunset; crushed velvet twilight in my City of Dreams.



Magic hour; shortly after the sun has passed below the horizon.

Neon lights reflecting off wet asphalt. The feel of the sun and wind on the face. Iridescence. Moonglow. The Cosmos. Stars sprinkled on a midnight blue-black sky. Aurora Borealis. Silver aircraft illuminated by sunlight, high up in the stratosphere. That numinous feeling associated with the glory of being alive.


The Road. Wide open plains or prairies, the desert under a sapphire sky, the light polarised by aviator's sunglasses.


Below the sky's canopy, rain forest echoing rich life. Dense, lush, exotic, saturated colours. Darts a dragonfly, unchanged from the Carboniferous era, 300 million years ago. Like the shark, a great evolutionary triumph.


And lobefins - air-breathing fish making their way out of the oceans to evolve into land animals. Trilobites scuttling about beneath giant horsetail ferns that tower 30m over primeval swamps, half-way from Zero to One. What was once, will be. The infinite - immortality - atavism. Time past morphing seamlessly into the future. Palm fronds, Palm Hills, Iridium Springs... 1950s America.

The 1950s - mid-Century modern architecture from the USA, influenced by Scandinavian modernism. Flat roofs, windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Industrial infrastructure shimmering in the heat - steel pipes, radio masts, railway lines converging into the distance.






The Radio - tuning in through the crackly ether to catch pedal steel guitar and station idents. Heavenly doo-wop harmonies, crooning saxophone and carefully chosen notes from an upright bass.

Mysticism blending with sensuality, floating off to where waves lap endlessly upon the shore on some faraway beach. Footsteps in slow motion; sunlight and saltwater on the skin; the Oceanic Feeling. Metaphysical sensations. The transience of blossom, the earliest intimations of impending autumn.

An aesthetic that connects the conscious observer with the Eternal, catching those moments of transcendence from the here-and-how.

This is but a sketch of a draft of a prototype of an aesthetic manifesto - a direction in which I am driven to explore. Where to go, what to experience. But most important - to define further. I have a Quest.

Photograph of 1930s aeroplane - Nick Morris 

Infra-red photograph of railway line - Rysiek Szydło

This time two years ago:
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July

This time seven years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm

This time eight years ago:
Rural suburbias - the ideal place to live?