'It is written that snow is white'

‘It is written that snow is white...’ Exhibition inspired by a A. Škema poem .

This exhibition is dedicated to my father, Jonas Tamutis, who departed on a snowy day in November 2021. The cover image is of the last road he travelled in Kurtuvėnai, Lithuania.

This catalogue was produced for the exhibition ‘It is written that snow is white’. November 18 - December 21, 2022, Edinburgh. Curated by Jurgita Galbraith. COPYRIGHT © 2022 · BIRCH TREE GALLERY

I read Antanas Škėma for the first time in 1989. His writing was forbidden in Lithuania until then. His novel ‘’The White Shroud’’ had a profound impact on me, even though I didn’t know at that time that my own life would follow the footsteps of the writer: I emigrated to the United States a few years later. Unlike one of the characters of the novel, ‘The White Shroud‘, I didn‘t buy a ring with carnelian before departing. I did not wish to stay there and I didn‘t.

The poem ‘Snow’ kept showing up in my life like a golden thread in a tapestry. In February 2022, after a deeply emotional stay in snowy Lithuania,, I invited artists I have worked with before to read the poem and respond in their own way. Twenty-four artists created artwork and kindly shared what this poem evoked in them. I am certain it is not the end of the journey.

Peter Davis. ‘Shroud’, mxed media on canvas, 70 x 50 cm

Antanas Škema

Antanas Škėma was born in 1910, in Łódź, Poland. During World War I he lived in Russia with his parents. In 1921 they all returned to Lithuania. He briefly studied medicine and then, law, but found himself ‘at home’ in theatre and, also, started to write. In 1944, upon the second Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he left to Germany. This is where his first book of short stories was published. Later he emigrated to the United States, where he mainly worked as a manual labourer and a lift operator. He died in a car accident in 1961. A. Škėma’s main work is a novel ‘Balta Drobule’ (White Shroud). It is the only full A. Škėma’s work translated into English which was recently, in 2018, published in Glasgow by Vagabond Voices.

‘Antanas Škėma belongs to that generation of Lithuanian writers whose views were formed and who emerged into the literary world in a period of wars and occupations, in that tragic epoch of contradictions and the denial of an absolute scale of values. [...] The esthetics of the writers of the period of independence might be roughly called “symbolic,” while the esthetics of this generation might be called “existential”; to these writers creation itself is a mode of existence — that is, it is an existential act and an existential truth. Instead of the sentimental and intimate egocen-trism of their predecessors, these writers turned to humanism, to an emphasis on man and the ethical problem; in other words, they focused their attention on existential motifs.’ (Andrius Sietynas (Lituanus, June, 1958 Vol. 4, No. 2))

SNOW

It is written that snow is white.

Angels’ wings are from non-melting snow. And the souls of infants in their mothers’ wombs, And other comparisons.

Where is my soulmate, who has turned snow into a Eucharistic wafer, Into a farewell kiss, Into permafrost death and my own elderliness? Who is my soulmate, who has never been born as he is eternally alive? Where can I find him? But that is meaningless. Would I wish to lose him once I find him?

I would be seeking for snow that has melted.

Original manuscript of the poem in Lithuanian provided by: Lithuanian Research and Study Center, A. Škėmos fondas (Chicago)

Glynnis Carter

The part of the poem that resonates most with me is the line ‘Where is my soulmate who has turned snow into a permafrost of death and my own elderliness.’

My first husband died over thirty years ago and it’s almost like he’s been frozen in time and yet I’ve gone on and become a very different person, had a different experience of life than I maybe expected to have and have developed as an artist. I sometimes feel sad that he didn’t see that and I do wonder how we would have developed together.

Although I’m chronologically definitely elderly I don’t feel elderly and it’s hard to think that that was all so long ago as well. I wanted to bring a bit of that ambiguity and wondering into the painting so I wanted to give it that sort of ethereal quality that snow can have - the way that snow falling, when you look up into the sky, can be mesmeric and then that comforting sense of quiet and stillness that you get with newly fallen deep snow.

‘Snow Spirit’, 91x91cm, mixed media on canvas

Belinda Glennon

My ceramic work was influenced by the poem’s ethereal quality. The line ‘Angels’ wings are from non-melting snow’ resonates a sense of strength and fragility with images of wings made from snowflakes, but it was the final lines really inspired my ceramics:

‘Would I wish to lose him once I find him?

I would be seeking for snow that has melted’.

I wanted to push the clay to its limit of fragility to capture a remembered moment. I had caught some perfect, unique snowflakes in my hand and they melted away to a drop of water as I was just focussing on their intricate beauty. They were gone, from natural perfection to a water droplet, gone. Those final words of the poem question the elusive nature of connections, sometimes as you see and recognise them they can melt away to something imperceptible, as snowflakes when melted to water. Fragile beauty is transitory.

My pieces are thrown in stoneware, layered with snowy white flax porcelain which has moved, cracked and lifted through the drying and firing processes. Silver leaf accentuates the movement. The spiralling undulations are a suggestion of the sharp, fragility of snowflakes, pinched out to their very finest edge before collapse.

‘Impermanence I’ 28 x 16cm; ‘Impermanence II’ 23 x 15 cm; wheelthrown stoneware, porcelain slip, pinched porcelain, silver leaf

Catriona Taylor

I loved the visual imagery of the poem - the angels wings - and the sense of sadness and loss. To me it seemed as if it was a woman who had not been able to have a child, and that she is mourning that loss. She seems to be saying that unlike angels, she does not have an unborn soul in her womb. And for her what is left for comfort is her faith, symbolized by a Eucharistic wafer. I had a strong sense of a snowy landscape and the woman musing as she looks out on it.

I created a mixed-media work which I suspended in resin. The resin represents the woman at the window, the glass, but also of a memory which can be remembered, but can’t be touched. Sadly I managed to break this piece. Although, on reflection, in a strange way, that seems fitting: ‘a dream that shattered’. I then decided to make memory pieces that were more abstract, looking at the colours of grief, for me –blue and green, and also, the colours that I see in the shadows that snow creates. I decide to suspend these pieces in resin, again, as it represents ice and cold, as if it is something ‘left behind’ – in the ice or under the ice.

Snow I, Snow II, and Snow III, 23 x23 cm,

collage suspended in resin

The poem conjures up for me images of snowy landscapes, particularly the Scottish highlands, and how the snow alters and softens the land, covering and hiding the layers below. How it makes the familiar landscape unfamiliar. I was reminded of the fleeting nature of the snow, how its arrival and departure holds both a joy and a sweet melancholy. “Seeking for snow that has melted” seems to talk about an elusive journey to find a prefect person or place, or home.

I wanted to paint a monochromatic landscape, which began with different values and tones of white and grey, but later included pink. In the process I collaged many pieces of an old dictionary using words from the poem, e.g. angel, snow, melt, wings, white etc – all but one of these has been buried under the layers of snow.

‘The Fleeting Beauty of Snow’, mixed media on board, 50 x 50 cm

Janine Baldwin

‘Ephemeral II’, pastel, charcoal and graphite on paper, 35 x 41cm

The poem resonated with me as it speaks of the ephemeral nature of snow and the passing of time in seasons. And this is something I have always reflected upon in my work as a landscape artist. Snow symbolises a brief moment in time we cherish, just like life itself, and rather than be sad of its passing we should be glad we were able to witness its beauty.

Samantha Yates

European mouth blown glass, ~40 cm in height and width

Ian McNicol

The poem ‘Snow’ is fairly abstract in its nature and construction. There is an underlying sadness and melancholy relating to the fleeting sense of fragility and loss.

In response to this, the piece produced is an etching on steel, on a plate that was revisited and reworked several times, using various tonal and line techniques. This latest reiteration of a ring-shape contains a ray of abstract geometries, interlaced with various iconographies. When printed, the ring encompasses a large white circle on either positive or negative space and also sits balanced on an embossed snowflake.

Untitled, Etching & Aquatint on Steel 63 x 64 cm

‘Snowscape’ bottles, slab-built white porcelain with black and blue inlays

Carol Sinclair

The poem reminded me of the contrasting sensations that snow brings. Of permanence and impermanence, old and new, birth and death. And the timeless quality of a snowy landscape that brings all of these things together into a frozen moment. Snow numbs our senses, while it also expands our perception of space.

I’ve used pure white porcelain in my forms to capture the visual softness brought to the landscape by snow with the contrasting black and luminescent blue representing the near and far elements of that expanded space and flattened perspective.

‘Snowscape’ vessels, slab-built white porcelain with colour-porcelain inlays

Susan Macintosh, RSW

“Snow” is, as poems always are, filled with layers of resonances and meanings and the one theme that stayed with me was one of yearning and melancholy.

Yearning for one’s soulmate whose natural home is one of loving expansion and illumination and to desire that one’s soulmate is down inhabiting earth would mean that all of the characteristics that you love and yearn for, would be lost.

I found this a very difficult piece to work with because it was so melancholic. That what one wished for and desired would be lost if one ever attained it.

Generally, when I’m working, which is in watercolour and ink, on paper. The paper is the third important material, when I said watercolour; there is water, then pigment and paper. And in the luminousness, luminosity even, of paper, there is something of spirit which shines through and even in the darkest paintings there is light, there is present spirit. Whereas in the poem “Snow”, spirit and soul, one’s soulmate, wasn’t present, could never be present and manifest with you and that was incredibly difficult to work with, I felt.

‘Descent’, watercolour and ink on Arches

Aquarelle paper, 55.5 x 65.5 cm

Bruce Shaw

I sensed feelings of love, loss, searching and the ephemeral fragility of things in life running through the poem. Reading the poem as it is written in the first person and with a heavy hint to de Chirico’s metaphysics, resulted in the piece becoming almost a self-portrait in response to the questions that Škėma asks.

Incorporating a figurative element but in a not too literal sense, the cast shadow against the snowy landscape is my own ‘elderly shadow’ a kind of self portrait...searching, wondering...for that soul mate or inner self? Who may or may not exist?

Would it be in another time? Thus the window or portal to another dimension? As in the lit doorway... are we eternally alive beyond it? If we enter would we be seeking snow that has melted.

‘Snow’, pen and pencil on paper, 13.5 x 43cm

Rona MacLean

‘Snow’, 33x52 cm, unique screen-print on hand-made paper

Libby Scott Mette Fruergaard-Jensen

I explored non-permanence of snow, which is kind of a play on the idea of how snow can be nonpermanent – it disappears, it has a very short life. It blankets th landscape and it also brings out textures, feathers, marks that you normally just wouldn’t see. And also with a snow , the blanketing there is the peace, there is the quietness along that. But what I have gone is the energy, the depth that I feel when I am, for example cross- country skiing across highland Perthshire.

‘Snow’, print on elm panel, 23cm x 23 cm

The poem had a feeling of loneliness about it, reminding me of going skiing in Norway, the silence, the white snow and the pine forests, so that’s what was on my mind making it.

I wanted my painting to be multi-layered really wanted to develop the depth. So the structure of it has a feeling of landscape, but then the applications on top of it, with the feeling of show blasting through, getting that energy in. I really wanted to built a sense of history into the painting and the sense of depth –going into the landscapes, going into the snow storm.

I feel I’ve embedded the snows into the very depth of my painting.

‘Non-melting snow’ I and II, 70 x 47 cm (each, dyptich) acrylic mixed media on board

Lorna Fraser

A recurring theme in my ceramics has been to give a sense or suggestion of something that has been frozen in time – like a petrified forest or plants in winter. Starkly white it was a fragility that maybe reminiscence of a lost moment. I think that there is a similarity with the the poem and particularly the line ‘Angels wings are from non-melting snow’.

When I first read the poem ‘Snow’, in the translation into English, what struck me was the mood it sets up. For me there’s a distinct feeling of loss, a meditation on trying to grasp at things which are transient, things which are basically ephemeral. There’s a contrast between the temporal and the permanent. On a very personal level the poem reminds me of a death of a person so very close to me. A person who became seriously ill during a winter of snow and ice, only to die as the winter released it’s grip, the flowers began appearing and the streams started flowing.

So my response in a visual way was to create a work where the still winter whiteness contrasts with the dark sky, with perhaps a brightening in the distance, and eventually melting into a stream as the pigment flows off the paper at the bottom. The subtitle is a Shetland weather word which describes a thaw.

‘Melting Snow (Tow)’, Mixed Media on Khadi handmade paper, 43 x 26.5 cm

Nicky May Bolland

When I first read the poem ‘Snow’, I was struck by the way it spoke to the relationship between permanence and loss. This is something that I’ve been exploring for a while in my own work – I’m interested in the tension between these as it relates to my personal experience as a mother, as well as to our collective experiences in terms of climate change and the pandemic.

I came across many articles and a large Facebook community dedicated to cataloging the life and times of ‘snow patches’ across Scotland – these are the small fragments of snow that remain into the summer. Until recently a number of these had a good chance of making it all the way through summer and into winter again, including the most infamous and well named, ‘the sphinx’: but increasingly this is no longer the case. As our climate changes, these small fragments of snow have shifted from being an almost permanent feature to a seasonal presence. For many this visible loss has become symbolic of something much less tangible that we are all grappling with. I also became captivated by the forms – smooth and relatively plain above, but a complex mosaic underneath where wind and the melting process has eaten at them. A stratification of time and change.

In developing the pieces I took these forms as a canvas to explore my own relationship and memories of snow, motherhood and loss, using a lithography process to print photographs onto the handbuilt and carved under-sides of the forms. The piece requires the viewer to shift and peer to get a view of what’s going on below the surface. It is said that there are 421 words for Snow in scots, so hard to choose, but in Doric, spoken in the northeast where I grew up and where some of the photos were taken the word is sna, and there was a lot of it back in the day.

‘Winter Snow Summer Riddles’ 15 x 12.5 x 5cm Carved

hand-built ceramics with print

Sheila Anderson-Hardy

I interpreted the poem ‘Snow’ as a metaphor for the transitory nature of life. Our pursuit of desires and longings later become inconsequential, as the poet so beautifully puts it ‘seeking for snow that has melted’. Perhaps a reminder that we should appreciate whatever life offers and be content.

I created this painting over many months. Putting aside any figurative plan I worked instinctively. As the poem has layers of meaning I worked in layers of oil paint. I thinned pigments with linseed oil; spreading the oily washes using brushes, palette knifes rubber squeegees and my hands, revealing or obscuring earlier layers. I was not quite sure when to stop.

Gradually and quite unconsciously the piece evolved into an abstract landscape reminiscent of snow-covered liminal lands. I realised, just as that thought struck, that I had painted an almost forgotten memory from my early childhood home by the sea. When one winter an extraordinary heavy snowfall was followed by a great chill which caused the sea to form a layer of ice. Recalling that event I knew then that my painting was finished.

‘Drifting’, oil on canvas, 102x102cm

‘Midwinter Morning’, print on paper, 33,5 x 31 cm

Brenda Martin

In the silence of snow there is a soft beating of wings. The strong delicate feathers collide in the anguished cacophony of a fluttery seagull raid. It melts back into the snowy landscape leaving only a single down feather floating on a frosted earth and the haunting call of a lone gull. For me the single downy feather becomes a kiss from a loved one lost.

‘Seagull Raid’, oil on board, 80 x 60 cm

Liz Myhill, RSW

I found so much beauty in the fragility and starkness of these words, a fragility I wanted to echo in the transient nature of snow and ice its ability to be as gentle as a snowflake, as hard and unyielding as ice and as fluid as water with always the melancholy inevitability that it will melt and vanish from our eyes.

‘Fractuerd’

12x22cm watercolour and monotype

Jurgita Galbraith

We yearn for something we can‘t fully name, and after fulfilling one dream, start looking for another. We experiencing longing that perhaps can‘t be fulfulled in this world. Are we looking for something divine, something that is beyond our current horizon? This is what a circle of untouched white paper represents. We only see a limited stretch of our life illuminated, while the essence of our ‘being‘ remains beyond our comprehension.

‘Multiple Horizons’, watercolour on paper, 40 x 40 cm

Hanna Salomonsson

I grew up in Småland in southern Sweden, and my ceramics are inspired by the Småland landscape. My childhood memories of the lakes of Småland are about winter as well as summer. I remember ice skating, and that deep, rumbling sound of the ice moving. I remember the sound of snow under cross-country skis as we skied out to an island and grilled hot dogs. I remember the sound of the ice auger as we drilled holes for ice fishing.

However, when I started sketching at the lakes in preparation for this exhibition I was struck by how the winter landscape has changed. The lakes don’t freeze over, and the snow doesn’t stay for long or it doesn’t snow at all. Perhaps the seasons are merging into one another as a result of climate change. Or perhaps it’s just that my winter memories are some form of romanticised snapshots.

In my sculptures for ’Snow’ I’m trying to capture my own, mixed images of these places. When looking inside the white winter exterior of the sculptures, you’ll find a Småland landscape where the season is somewhat ambiguous. So these are my summer and winter childhood lakes.

Mjälen (~ 33 cm dia), Lillasjön (oval, ~28 cm widest point), Bräkentorp (~ 20cm dia) , hand-painted porcelain with gold-leaf