Miscellaneous

Studio 19

Bluecoat Studios

Liverpool, England

2000 - 2006

DFN Gallery

560 Broadway

New York

2000

Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art.  Italy.

1st - 12 December 2007 (Representing the United Kingdom).

"Metamorphosis"

Retrospective Exhibition

Victoria Gallery and Museum

University of Liverpool

22 May - 31st October 2015

Curator:  Matthew H.Clough                      *Photo Credits: Michelle Molyneux & Robert Williams

Agora Gallery, New York

Four person exhibition - 2002

Stable of Artists 2001/2

Letter from Ged Fitzgerald re. Capital of Culture proposal as part of the twelve ideas to further the arts and culture in Liverpool date 1st April 1997 from a meeting with him in March.

Idea Pages (Included with letter to Ged Fitzgerald)

The Liverpool Dream

I conceived the idea for the Liverpool Dream as a celebration of Carl Jung's dream, where he saw Liverpool in it and called the City:

'The Pool of Life'

And the idea was  also conceived for the 800th anniversary of King John's signing of the charter for Liverpool in 1207.

I must thank John Kelly (artist) for realising my painting and collaborating with me on the rendering of it in  computer graphics.  Also to Terry McGunigle (sculptor) for carving the central medallion so deftly, and the engraving for the poem.  All of us gave our time and work 'Pro Bono' as a gift to the City of Liverpool and it's people.

(Off Mathew Street, Liverpool City Centre)

(2007 - 2019)

© Corbett (D.A.C.S)

Metamorphosis

To be part of the Great Knowing

Is all one needs -

The soft kiss of summer,

The hard-edged tear of winter,

The waking up of spring's dream,

The autumn's glory of falling leaves.

For we dance our individual joy or pain,

In the collective memory

Of humankind's museum:

This way and that,

Leading here and there

In the caress of a lover's charm.

The future, illusion's mother,

Is always one step ahead,

Mind-fed and wanting;

Where time closes on our musings,

And we contemplate the living and the dead

With equal weight altogether.

Then the celestial harvest begins again,

Cutting through the evening air

With touches of the changing years,

It bells out mortal sounds

To a hidden rhythm;

Pre-existent, formless,

Heaven and earth rolled into One,

Moved by the metamorphosis

Of some greater Mystery.

The Lifewave

In the painted surface of your pale skin

The fire of destiny is born within,

Crossing the universal Void,

Spelling out the secret syllables

Of the diamond-centre sword,

Where the moon's silver thread

Weaves the stories of childhood:

The keeper of the pigeon feathers,

The storer of wisdom

In flowery packets,

The dreamer of the tidal ebb and flow.

This wild frontier of the soul

Stretches out to the infinite edge:

It reflects the Kingdom.

It's multi-layered head

Shining against the dark blue sky.

There the poet's crown is held high

In fields of bliss.

The way out is through Knowledge,

Through light-realms,

Through the feeding of love's bounty.

And in the final solitude before death's embrace,

You choose the circle of Illumination

To lighten your load

Along the shores of pain;

To rest again in your Beginning

Which is your End,

Your common origin, the Lifewave,

Covered in the aura of pure gold.

Aysgarth Falls  (For Liz Kavanagh)

We roller-coaster'd down

The Yorkshire Dales' runways,

High-seeking the stone sheep-pens,

Open for rainy days

And to mountain plantations.

Then, in Hawes, had a picnic lunch

By the swift-river,

Flying around the foam-rock circles;

Sitting on it's walled edge

With bird-talk and lilting homilies.

Moving on to Aysgarth Falls,

Walking down the steep cemetery path;

Finding the panoramic scene unfold

By the old mill bridge.

And massaged your Irish back

To the crashing and crossing of dreams,

Lichen-clad and moss strewn:

Echoing the prehistoric sound

Of the rush-water's seething;

Beauty's redeemer,

In the subterfuge

Of some earthly Eden.

Then home by way of misty crags

And cloudy sun,

A precious reminder for the future

Of time well spent together;

In simple contemplation

Of a small adventure,

Just sharing a journey with you,

That will never end.

Some Higher Annunciation

The hedgerows envelop the fields of corn,

Full-faced and turning with the wind's

Gentle blow, with it's invisible tide

Of weathered change;

The falling of leaves in the clear air

Sending them in spirals

Down to mulch the earth's soil-bed.

Life then grows again

It rebounds in egg-embryos

And haystack billet-doux:

The tincture of time

Patinating the myriad roads

Of youth and age;

Bare maps of fate unwinding,

Embracing the ocean currents

Of some higher Annunciation

That guards the soul of Nations:

It breathes softly on today,

Still as the moon's shadow

Reflected on the lake's mirror-horizon.

Yellow Bananas (For Paul Simpson)

The dream courtiers

Singing in the Mathew Street parade,

Set the pace for surreal adventures;

The apple-beat of wisdom

Spawning new directions,

Heralds of thunder and lightning

In the show-down by the Liverpool Dream.

The ancient curse, now dispelled,

From the spirit-caverns' opening

In a witness for peace to the world:

The Word softly spoken in hit-machines

Down revolving doorways

In the Om-belly of action;

Finger-picking melodies

Whose rock-messiah begins

With a sacred groove,

Tauting for the next Big One.

Then a wild swan flies home,

Touching the angel of deliverance

With its feathered wings,

As the pilgrim's story is told again

In divine comedies;

A union of yellow bananas

And musical sundries,

Left out to dry

On the thin wires

Of dusty fame.

No More Or Less To Say

The snow patterns sink deeper

A sentinel of the flux of change;

Arythmic, spontaneous, arising

Like the wispy clouds of the morning.

Then the fire-mist comes,

Hangs in the shadowed-valleys

When the Dorje joins the living and the dead

In tongues of the Thunderbird;

And the Universal Breath is breathed

In the full silence of the Awakened.

And in the magic resonance of Nature

The Dharma is moved in the invisible Mind,

To walk on, to be oneself,

To just Be.

And in that moment of forever

There is no past or future,

All is Now and always will be,

Through the coming and going of illusion

In your own shadow-play.

And in the end

You have either lived a life

Of one note only, or a symphony -

There is no more or  less to say.

Ode To Freedom

Listen to my freedom song,

The simple book of existence

Nourishing the earth's damp soil,

To grow the ancient trees whole again,

To walk on the narrow road

Converted to  hymns of fellowship.

An artist painting his inner life,

Expressions of spirit-forms

Lit from below;

A mise-en-scene of secrets,

Pathways to recognition

Across the universe of emotions -

Your gentle touch at night.

Your feather-bed open to the elements.

Your box-cage broken into fragments.

In this moment is everything;

The mystic Now-layering of silence,

A honeycomb of feeling

In the corridors of peace,

Balancing by degrees

The waters of the sublime:

Breathing the same Dream

Passed down from Zep Tepi

To the present.

Just listen to my song of freedom

And see with clear eyes

The stars whose dark-blue lake

They swim in,

Carrying wisdom in their diamond glow.

(SHAMBALA: A NEW REVELATION - 80 POEM ANTHOLOGY - FREE DOWNLOAD)

Every painting is... an adventure'   Peter Corbett

This retrospective of Peter Corbett's major series of oil paintings is shown for the first time at the University of Liverpool Senate House Exhibition Hall as part of the independent strand of the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art 2004.  Corbett's work offers an interesting series of challenges to the viewer.  It is abstract, draws upon a variety of painting techniques, and is underpinned by multiple sources of inspiration of varying complexity.

In the early 20th century artists began top explore the possibility of making works of art which were not simply representational.  The result was what is now termed 'abstract art' which emerged as a series of artistic movements abandoned the conventions of composition and representation in a search for new means of expression.  An abstract work of art can be defined as one in which the artist seeks to signify rather than imitate a particular object.  Standard figurative elements such as perspective, realistic portrayal or symbolism are avoided, the work being based on a series of areas of colour.

The loss of such clearly readable elements within the composition introduces certain tensions to the painting.  First, even though the conventional forms of expression are not employed, the artist still requires a starting point for the work.  This might be for example an actual landscape or still life, or something more nebulous such as a personal feeling or state of mind.  Secondly, the artist must avoid creating simply an example of design.  That is to say that the work has to convey a significance beyond being for example an arrangement of colours.  Abstraction is thus a challenge both to the artist and the viewer.  The abstract artist chooses a difficult path, in that he denies himself standard motifs whilst at  the same time making the work much harder to read for the viewer.  The advantage, however is that he can explore complex emotional and spiritual subjects which cannot be represented conventionally.

This exhibition presents the work Corbett made between 1987 and 2002, a period in which he developed a series of abstract oil on canvas paintings utilizing a unique technique he terms 'double edging'.  This technique was discovered by accident by Corbett in 1987, and involves loading opposite edges of the paintbrush with two different colours.  The resulting painted line shows the distinct colours at the edge, and a blend of the two through the centre.  This effect gives the body of work a distinctive, coherent feel, and underpins the artists expressed interest in the 'painterly' i.e. the technical use of colour, and the physical craft of creating a painting.  Corbett has linked this new double edging with more classic methods such as glazing and washing.

The series clearly demonstrates the development of the double edging technique.  Early works such as Oceania (1987) have a staccato application of double edged lines, almost flecks, producing a blurred, dreamy effect.  Pool of Life (1990), a title a reference to the inspirational energy Corbett draws from the city of Liverpool, marks the creation of the organic shapes, drawn using double edging, which occur through most of the series.  By 1997 the work Lifewave I has demonstrated the full development of the concept.  Here the viewer sees with clarity the possibilities hinted at in the earlier Oceania, the carefully graduated background in blue decorated with a balanced arrangements of organic shapes created with double edging.  The very last works in the series show a desire by the artist to take the detail of the technique and paint it on a large scale.  Thus the balanced arrangements of organic shapes gives way to patches of ungraduated background and areas of less patterned colour. 

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A striking element of the works is the prevalence of the blue pigment mentioned above, which forms the background to many of the works.  On one level this can be read, together with the organic double edged shapes, as a reference to the artists expressed interest in water and cells which grew from personal research conducted in the 1970's.  It is true that the main body of the series does bear some resemblance to scientific photographs of cell cultures, greatly magnified to show the individual microbes.  But to read the works in this way is perhaps to fall into a trap which the earliest abstract artists had foreseen.  In the early 20th century artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian wrestled with the problems posed by abstraction.  As has been mentioned an abstract work did not necessarily require a figurative starting point, but like poetry or music could explore abstract concepts such as emotions.  None the less, the viewer naturally attempts to make a figurative interpretation, even if this is not what the artist intends.  As Malevich wrote in January 1916 'Only with the disappearance of a habit of mind which sees in pictures little corners of nature, Madonna's and shameless Venuses, shall we witness a pure living art...  the artist can be a creator only when the forms of his pictures have nothing in common with nature. '

Rather than a realistic image of cells or water, the pictures are an attempt to convey a visual impression of nature or life itself in its purest sense.  They are inspired by the mental states which Corbett has attained during thirty years as a student of meditation.  The strong blue tones are thus defined by the artist as the colour of the 'higher level' which meditation reaches.  As he states 'The aim is to reconnect with the underlying reality beneath the surface appearance of the objective world, and re-establish a change towards our spiritual essence again.'  The series is thus not a painterly exercise in abstraction, or an artistic interpretation of cell patterns.  Corbett has in fact sought to continue the complex intellectual explorations which the pioneers of abstraction began in the period around World War I.

Just as these earlier artists were interested in philosophical ideas which could be applied to abstraction, Corbett has indicated the importance of concepts such as Theosophy, the zero point field and chaos theory to his art.  Theosophy defines existence in terms of an infinite nature within finite time, whilst the zero point field is a theory of quantum physics which states that all matter emits an underlying energy which is all pervading but to which we are blind, in part because it is too large to comprehend.  Similar concepts are found in meditative religions, where the individual is attempting through meditation to reach enlightenment, i.e. to reach a level where they can recognise this underlying energy which can be called spirit.  Chaos theory states that the equations of physics, whilst valid in a strictly mathematical context, represent an approximation to a vastly more complex reality, driven by a series of restrictive assumptions.

It is inevitable that the habit of mind which Malevich identified will prompt the viewer to ask what these works represent.  The answer is that they offer a rare glimpse of the infinite, the indefinable, a visual interpretation of the artist's spiritual experience.

Matthew H. Clough

(Curator.  The University of Liverpool Art Gallery and Art Collections.)

Text in the 2004 Retrospective catalogue.

(THE LIVERPOOL DREAM - 128 POEM ANTHOLOGY)