Nature in chains

Found today on a beach in North Wales, here's some debris that struck me.

It's a piece of chain from the remnants of a 19^th century mining operation that has spent much of its life in the jaws of the Irish Sea.

As is often the case, the forces of nature have turned something quite mundane into something quite beautiful, somehow adding to it rich colour renders and wonderful textures.

The chain is now tightly wrapped and tied around itself, in one solid lump.

More poigniant perhaps is chains are almost a contronym, they are loose, flexible devices, perfectly free in movement, yet in history have been often used to confine, constrain and imprison – ironic then that nature in this instance has had the ability to combine both elements into this one beautiful piece.

Man, nature and things on a beach

There is in me an underlying conviction that despite our best efforts to create artistic pieces of beauty, hours of work, study, thought and passion, nature will pop along and quietly trump us with a serene ease.

..to add some ammunition to the argument, here’s an item I picked up a beach in Wales…

 

It was once I think part of a bed head, although it immediately struck me as Aladdin’s lamp, with jewels over the body and a spout. Either way, nature has made a piece of human rubbish into a jewelled and beautiful object, oozing with colour, texture and light

On a different note, it’s so fragile that as it’s drying out it’s falling apart, in effect once withdrawn from nature it’s slowly dying, much the same as ourselves, the more disjointed from nature we become as a species, the less of a coherent species we become, which brings me on to a piece I’d love to do….

 

…it’s a series of a cast iron man, slowly emerging out of the ground, until finally he is completely separated from the earth, with the final man having fallen…..demonstrating that once mankind has become completely detached from nature, we will cease to be alive.