WATER

This blog is about the element of ‘water’ especially that of the sea, and how it has been represented by different artists of all kinds, keeping its existence flowing through time and space and life.

My fascination with water is inspired by the way it changes all the time, it is never the same, yet it is solid and fluid at the same time. It is a powerful element in the world that can be perceived as beautiful and yet destructive simultaneously. It is this paradox which water presents, that I will explore in all its glory and destruction.

The first artist that deserves to start the flow is Leonardo da Vinci who compared water to a paradox, saying:

“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, sometimes 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.”

Water is more or less the source of life, for without water we cannot survive. Therefore its importance to the world is paramount, be it drinking water, water from the skies, water from the earth, water such as tears from a human being, and last but not least, water that creates the infinite and fathomless sea.