The Nature of Infinity

The Vortex has been the crux of much scientific and philosophical enquiry for millennia. Patanjali, Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle, Yeats, The Huai Nan Tzu, Edgar Allen Poe, Rumi, Ezra Pound, Newton, Descartes, Coleridge, Milton, and William Blake are just a selection of the scientists, writers, philosophers who were concerned with the power and mystery of the vortex. I too am fascinated by the dynamic nature of the vortex, and investigate its’ movement, form and mystery through my lens.

I have taken photographs of a vortex in water during both the day and night. These photographs, although taken using a digital camera, have not been digitally generated. I have examined my photographs with particular reference to the writings of William Blake, a poet of the Romantic Era, in his epic poem, Milton. Blake’s poem describes how Milton leaves Heaven and returns to Earth to do battle with forces which prevent him from connecting with his true nature.

William Blake’s writings and paintings challenge the reasoned mind, and it is this inquisitive imaginative process which Blake believes is the essence of connecting with one’s true nature. Blake wrote, “The nature of infinity is this! That every thing, has its’ own Vortex,….” For Blake, infinity - eternity - is a life of ceaseless creativity, where social constraints and conditioning, memory, history - delusionary coverings of the creative spirit - are all shed. In my photographs there are no socially identifiable features upon which to hang one’s response.

I have explored shape, colour and form in my photographs in relation to the notion of time – past, present and future. I have done this through the positioning of images in each series, in conjunction with the elements of foreground and background, and the concepts of close and distant. I am interested in this duality of opposites and explore this also through my investigation of night/day, movement/stillness, masculine/feminine, above/below, philosophical/concrete. I examine elements of nature and landscape - horizon, sky, water, sunset, valleys, rivers. I am interested in the individual nature of each vortex and links with Individualism. I have also explored connections; those which are represented as tangible, and those which diffuse into the ether. I use both two and three dimensions to express this exploration.

These images, without cognitive social referencing, provide an opportunity to experience one’s inquisitive creative mind and observance of emotional response, allowing connection with what I consider the key to Eternity - that is - the infinite vortex of the present.

.... The nature of infinity is this! That every thing, has its
Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro Eternity,
Has passd that Vortex, he percieves it roll backward behind
His path, into a globe itself infolding: like a sun:
Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty.
While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth
Or like a human form, a friend with with whom he livd benevolent.
As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing
Its vortex; and the north & south, with all their starry host;
Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding
His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square,
Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent
To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.
Thus is the heaven a vortex passd already, and the earth
A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity ....
William BlakeMilton 14:21-35