Keren Dibbens-Wyatt's Blog, page 17

116. Bert and Ernie (Humour 3)

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This is the fabulous Cubist painting my talented husband did (without working from any photos) of two of our favourite characters from Sesame Street. I absolutely love it! Taking something familiar and reworking it using another cultural style or vision is something we can only do with a very free and wide-ranging imagination. To merge two such different references tickles us, it is humorous precisely because it is so original and so unlikely a combination, as well as because something for children’s entertainment isn’t usually given a highbrow treatment.

In this way, we see humour, imagination and juxtaposition all contributing to our seeing – even as onlookers rather than as the artist. Similarly, just as this gives us an insight into Rowan’s inner world, we can find ourselves learning more about God’s character and thought processes when we see his creativity all around us. Can you really declare God without humour once you have seen a duck-billed platypus or watched a bird balancing on one leg? And doesn’t he very often tickle our funny bone by dressing up fools as kings?

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017 Artwork copyright R R Wyatt, used with permission.

115. Moustache (Humour 2)

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Okay, I’m not sure this really qualifies as a contemplative photograph, but what the heck! This was my finding humour in the large amount of hair I received as a gift for brushing our cat. So obviously it became a lovely handlebar moustache. Perhaps it is a good illustration of how we can take even the detritus of life and make something cheerful out of it. I hope it makes you smile. I like to think that contemplation (in whatever form) is almost always a bringer of joy.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

114. The Dockdoor will see you now. (Humour 1)

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So our next theme in learning to see with new eyes, is humour. What do you see around you that makes you laugh, or makes a sweet or funny connection? This word (presumably a shipping reference) on a cardboard box, made me roar with laughter as I imagined a vampiric doctor with fangs and a stethoscope….

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

113. Bright and Dull – Juxtaposition conclusions

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Conjunction, the seeing of things in relationship to their surroundings, is what we’ve been looking at over the past fortnight. Another aspect of seeing and understanding the world around us. Bright things look brighter next to dull things as in this photo of a matt brown raft spider and its web covered in dew, and vice versa. It is something to be on the lookout for in our contemplations, in our ponderings, in our photography. When something stands out to us, we might be clearer on exactly why that is. And of course, as always, this can be highly personal. What you notice, what jumps out at you rather than me, may be doing that because it strikes a thought or memory that is particularly strong. Sometimes the juxtaposition is not right in front of us, but between our inner life and the outer world. Next we will be looking at how humour influences our seeing.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

112. Summer and Winter (Juxtaposition 12)

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Bunting, long dead, flapping against the window, and the skeletal branches outside feeling cold and unadorned. Yet it is these latter that will soon be reborn, holding life sleeping within, and the flags that will stay drab and dusty, all they have to look forward to is being packed away until the next celebration. Outside, the green leaves will bedeck the branches.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

111. Solid and Liquid (Juxtaposition 11)

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Reflected or real, which state is the true one? It is sometimes hard to say. And then there is water, which defies categorisation, being the source of life, the place we began, the stuff to crawl out of and run back to, splashing our own 97% into the shoreline. Creatures of change, the ripples feel more like home, the waving image a better reflection, perhaps, than the solidity of glass or the eternity of plastic.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

110. Spots and Stripes (Juxtaposition 10)

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Some of us pool our tears, some of us let them streak our faces. Either way, we cannot sit forever in our letting go. Next to each other, circles and lines call out one another’s foolishness, and at the same time speak of every form there is, if they work together. Marking our flocks, like Jacob’s mischief, we collect all the patterned fleeces and leave the plain ones, looking for richer stock and a fuller, more textured life.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

109. Staying and Leaving (Juxtaposition 9)

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The difference in this photo is between the petals who are still holding on, and those which have chosen to let go. Falling is sometimes the way forward, if we can only see it, and summon up the courage to drop into unseen hands. Other times, we need to stand, and our overcoming happens by our firmness in not allowing ourselves to be moved. Seasons are everything in the wisdom of this. Just ask a tree.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

108. Nature and Civilization (Juxtaposition 8)

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The ivy is slow, but the glass and upvc is slower. Glass, I have read, is slowly sinking down, like raindrops caught within a sheet of ice. But it will be many decades before it is noticeably thicker at the bottom than at the top. Ivy creeps and sticks, and greens its way across the landscape.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

107. Life and Death (Juxtaposition 7)

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Wabi sabi, the Japanese call it when we see beauty in the ugly, or life within death – essentially beauty within imperfection. Put the two things together and they can often seem like two halves of a whole. Both are present, both are necessary. The death of a caterpillar is the birth of a butterfly, after all.

text and photo © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017