Guest Blog by Stuart Ballard
- Katie Ballard
- Nov 7, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 8, 2020
SUNDAY SERVICE: WINTER SWIMMING
Stuart Ballard and Juliette Morton
Stuart created this illustration in response to Juliette’s poem written whilst Poet in Residence at Lake 32 - Waterland in the Cotswold Water Park. Read more about the Waterland residency.
Over to Stuart to explain...
At the time I was working at the lake as an Outdoor Pursuits Instructor with a passion for teaching bushcraft and nature connection. Having previously worked as an Illustrator and with a keen interest in contemporary poetry, I was moved to respond to Juliette’s work visually.
The line that triggered the response was, ‘Hands sweep from prayer to embrace’. On reading it, I realised with a flash that it beautifully described the physical action of breaststroke, but also the sense of longing and fulfilment that we encounter in love and in the visceral intensity of committing to a cold water swim.
Sunday Service: Winter Swimming
Unscrew the lid and the steel flask rings like a singing bowl calls the body to this winter ritual of fixing broken frequencies. Steam from the enamel cup mists the windscreen and we swig the coffee down, bittersweet and eager, hot enough to relieve the brain’s thinking. Dry Robes slither off the arms, hang on lakeside pegs and we smirk each time at the sign: No Recreational Swimming. Toes in, soles of feet laid down on the limestone shingle followed fast by ankles and calves, knees and thighs and hips– and pause at the waist– to draw breath, to exclaim, to lower palms to the bream-fin grey black cormorants, conifers on the near horizon. Goggles on. Brace. Go. Push into the navy deep, scuds of shallow waves at the neck. Hands sweep from prayer to embrace. Face in, eyes open to the brightening clay floor, a copse of weed in the water’s glacial clarity glaucous and strange, a beatific underworld. This lake has played, bred, killed, fed, held– our ecstatic skins sing in praise and we drum the yellow buoy in devotion to this heathen mass, immerse ourselves in this instant, this place, this body of flesh and water. Turning toward the shore, we observe the coda of submerged birch hail again the marvel of the white magpie in its branches give thanks for this time out of mind, this chattering spirit of renewal.
The idea for the illustration started by turning Juliette’s observation back on itself. If winter swimming is like an act of religious devotion, what would it look like if we took swimming to church? This question spawned the idea of a stained glass window. The circle shape is a nod to the Zen Buddhist symbol of the ensõ, the circle of enlightenment, and recognises the sacred in the first line of the poem. ‘Unscrew the lid and the steel flask rings like a singing bowl’.
The central figure of the swimmer is transformed into an angel by the addition of the wings which references the startling and otherworldly white Magpie that lives on the site. The yellow ‘halo’ around her head is a representation of the yellow buoy which is the turning point on the swim. The circles emanating from it echo the ripples in the water and ‘fixing broken frequencies’ line.
Three hooded figures depict swimmers in Dry Robes, for a long time I thought look like monks! There is something about them which is reminiscent of clerical ritual paraphernalia.
Silver birch flank the central figure and there is also a hint at ‘bream-fin grey’. The clover shape to the right references both the plant Wood Sorrel, which has citrus sweet stalks and during times of extreme survival, offers just enough to keep going, a pivot point between surrender and progress.
The image was created in Adobe Illustrator, which took many hours. It’s giclée printed using 12 vibrant colours onto thick lightly textured fine art paper. These are achive quality which is the same standard used by museums and art galleries.
Prints are for sale through ballardcreative.co.uk
Pamphlet available from Yew Tree Press
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