Red Ring

Summer 2022

I wanted to explore the interrelationship between red and the rest of the system. Red seems to be an 'interruption' of some kind, perhaps because fire and other bright red things tend to be interruptions on the landscape.

The element of fire - and the elements in Landcraft are not exactly as they are in other trads, although they rhyme - is similar to the Solar in that it is in some way man-made. The four elements do not balance. They are subject to the tugging forces of the Domains. Hence, fire is quenched by the deep strange dark near the Star.

In many of these symbols, red is absent. I wanted to try drawing a ring of the usual colours, and then an inner ring where I mix red with each of them. It has come out pleasingly, startlingly correct. The orange-reds of the Lightbringers fire, the dreamlike afternoon pink fluffy clouds, then the bold purple of witchcraft, into the strange indigos of winter; on the other side, an array of warm then desaturated browns, and then down into the strange purples of oil and the abyss.

The central line shows red as revealed by light - under the sun, bright children's red; then pinks; then deep, cold, dark reds like blood.