Views Of Our Time … Abstracts by Pat Yallup – (Painting the Sixth Sense)

Pat Yallup, an artist, and John Birch, a poet, have collaborated to produce a book of abstract art and poetry.

Split into four sections

• Mood Portraits;

• Unpredictable Events;

• Society Tainted with Evil; and

• Love, Hope and Optimism

there are paintings reflecting events as diverse as 9/11, bovine flu and bewilderment and poems on subjects such as paranoia and guilt.

As Pat says in her introduction, no two people see or feel the same about a scene or situation, so this book is clearly very personal to the author. We are asked to look at the pictures and use our own imagination. That’s what I did; for example, the painting entitled ‘Bewilderment’ brought to mind very clearly what it feels like to be in the middle of a migraine. Possibly not what the artist had in mind as she produced it, but an interesting exercise in individual interpretation.

Many of the paintings, like ‘Armageddon’, are stark and desolate in both subject matter and impact. This is rather a dark book, so not for everyone, however it is thought provoking and the bleakness is balanced by the depth of ‘Secret Meeting’ and uplifting poems like ‘Bridge of Hope’ and Divine Creation.