Water: Bill Viola & Leonardo

Sometime in the early 2000's, long before I thought I could even make art, I chanced upon Bill Viola's Five Angels for the Millennium in Tate Modern.  It was the most profound experience Id ever had in front of an artwork as an adult up till that moment (discounting seeing the James Martin depictions of Heaven, Hell & Purgatory as a child).

I am always drawn to water, whether still or stormy seas, gentle brooks, raging rivers, waterfalls or still ponds.  Maybe its because most of my childhood homes featured water: In Ireland; Clogga Bay, Arklow (at the mouth of the River Avoca), Brittas Bay, The Meetings of the Water (Avoka).  In Britain, Pimlico (on the bank of the Thames), the King William IV Pub, the place my family returned to 3 times, the main place in London we called home.

I can loose myself staring at water, immersing myself in the sounds and sensations.  Five Angels was like being completely immersed in all of those memories and feelings, it made my breath catch and my heart beat.  I sat in front of each screen several times, loosing track of time and left feeling elevated, lighter; up until that point I could never remember an artists name, that day and ever after, I remembered Bill Viola.

I found a quote from Leonardo DaVinci which expresses the enormity and significance of water wonderfully...

"Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous.

It suffers change into as many natures as are the different places through which it passes. And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject, so it alters with the nature of the place, becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.

Sometimes it starts a conflagration, sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, nourishes at times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, at times is without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods. In time and with water, everything changes"

For more on Leonardo and water see: http://witcombe.sbc.edu/water/artleonardo.html