In Pursuit of Spring
I had a panicky moment yesterday evening. Am I really going to manage this? A painting every day. A post every evening. The travel. The van. The turning over of one place into another. It all briefly felt excessive and self-imposed.
What draws me to what I’m doing here, though, is the rhythm and the discipline of committing to a daily creative act. There is something monastic in the routine - rising each morning to the same intention, keeping to a pattern regardless of mood, working through tiredness, tending the small practicalities before turning to the task at hand. The reward is a kind of catharsis and connection - sharpening my creative lens through the grit of daily movement, observation and creation. Order not imposed from outside, but shaped by what the day reveals itself.
Still, I arrived at Newport Cathedral - St Woolos’, or St Gwynllyw - in a state of anxiety, not helped by the unremarkable drive along the M4 and the steep walk up to the cathedral in the rain, bordered by litter along the boundary walls. Nothing about the approach soothed my nerves.
But once I was inside, the temperature shifted.
Entrance is through the tower and then into St Mary’s Chapel - which was part of the original church. From St Mary’s Chapel there is a view that steadies everything. The font in the foreground.
A Romanesque arch beyond it - reset Roman columns, re-carved Corinthian capitals - framing the heavy arcading.
Beyond that is the chancel with a dossal and window designed by John Piper in the 1960s.
It is almost as if the cathedral has been arranged as a stage set - from a single viewpoint - telling the story of Newport across sixteen centuries. Roman fragment. Norman arch. Victorian Romanesque. Modern intervention. Each generation refusing to discard what came before, instead incorporating, re-carving, re-expressing, and carrying it forward.
But from that single viewpoint in St Mary’s Chapel, another narrative presented itself to me - renewal out of breakdown. The Victorian Romanesque font growing from an original fragment. The Norman arch holding earlier Roman columns and re-carved Corinthian capitals. The heavy-set nave leading the eye towards the 1960s chancel, where Piper’s dossal, patterned like storm-tossed brine, rises towards the coloured repose of his glass. Coloured light resolving the turbulence inherent within an artist that experienced the vagaries of war.
I was struck by how instinctively we resist losing the essence of the past. How we incorporate and repair in likeness. We translate fragments into new forms and re-purpose old forms into new settings. In that moment I realised the building was modelling the very thing I was reaching for - the patient assembling of fragments into coherence. Roman column, Norman arch, modern glass. Doubt, tiredness, resolve. Stone ordered into structure. A creative life ordered by discipline.
When I stepped back outside, the rain had stopped, and feeling re-invigorated, things I had not noticed on the way up began to register - blossom glowing, flowers blooming. Spring breaking free from the discipline of winter.
The same hill. The same city. But reordered somehow like the cathedral. And I felt it too - ready to rise again the next morning and start again.
Weather: Changeable. Sunshine and Showers. Windy. 14.5 degrees celsius.
Observations: Blossom on the tree at the cathedral.
Total Miles Travelled: 1280 miles.
"That aura, those echoes-the muted light is transporting. What a space to feel rooted in history. I'd love to make that journey myself; you've stirred the opera lover and architectural dreamer in me."
@sonatasips via X
"In reading & seeing Andy's work I always struggle to know which is more impactful - his writing or photos. In truth, the two combined are greater than their parts, he allows you to explore the importance of place and time from the comfort of home."
Peter from Bluesky
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