Penelope M. Mackworth Praed
Serpentine - 2002
acciaio e pietra - h. cm. 22
To
say this piece symbolizes this, or that, is too definite. That it
comes out of my persona racial cultural landscape memory is probably
the nearest I can get. The South Coast of Cornwall, the Celtic edge
of the west of Britain, tapers off to the south into the Atlantic
Ocean. The rugged peninsula of Cornwall formed of a hard granite core
and a multiplex of mineral deposits is pounded incessantly by the
sea against its high unyielding cliffs, which have formed over innumerable
millennia into coves and crags where the Ocean mercilessly eddies
retreats and returns with every tide. The weather in a constant state
of change creates a land of mist and rainbows, which like the sea
invade and disperse over the dampened earth ,giving moments of sun
drenched clarity interspersed with mist, fog, storms, gails, battering
winds and soft sea breezes, all changing from hour to hour and minute
to minute and threading through the craggy, hilly, bent, rocky landscape.
The wildest and most southerly tip of Cornwall is Lizard point where
the serpentine cliffs fall vertically from the end of a sparsely populated
high moor of grass and small gnarled wind bent trees leaning in the
direction of the incessant prevailing coastal wind. It was from the
beech of this cove, that many years ago, I took this rock.
A point where from these rugged coves historically the wreckers and
plunderers of former times, on foul and stormy nights, by mimicking
the lighthouses of Falmouth and Plymouth harbours lured the merchant
ships bound for these ports to their doom against the rocks of the
bidden coves of the Lizard.
A land of an ancient language already spoken at the time of the Roman
invasion of Britain. A !and of rainbows, mists, of twilights, of endless
change and the ceaseless pounding of the sea. A land of blue and silver
light which W.B. Yeats describes as” heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the
dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light”. It is perhaps
something of this which has made this piece.
Nota biografica
Penelope Margaret Mackworth-Praed è nata a
Londra (GB)nel 1949 ed è cresciuta nella campagna sudorientale
inglese dopo il trasloco della famiglia.
Formazione presso Wimbledon, Falmouth e Epsom Colleges of Art and
Design. Diplomata nel 1976.
1969-1972: Prime costruzioni utilizzando una base numerica, caratteristica
di tutti i suoi lavori.
1972-1974: Soggiorni prolungati in Medio Oriente e in Asia del Sud
per lo studio e la conferma delle comuni basi numeriche alla radice
dell'arte e dell'architettura di molte culture differenti.
1977: Matrimonio con il compositore Paul Glass e trasferimento permanente
in Svizzera.
Dal 1982: docente universitaria di scultura a tempo parziale al Franklin
College Switzerland, Lugano-Sorengo.
Dal 1985: membro attivo della Società Pittori, Scultori e Architetti
Svizzeri (SPSAS)