Art in Video of Leonard Cohen Light as the Breeze

Introduction: I am republishing selected posts from Cohencentric (my old Leonard Cohen site) here on AllanShowalter.com. I was impressed with Martin Ferrabee's video realization of Leonard Cohen's Light As The Breeze and asked him to writer a guest post nearly this piece. This material was originally posted July 1, 2015 at Cohencentric.

Martin Ferrabee and Leonard Cohen

My name is Martin Ferrabee and earlier anything else I'chiliad here as a Leonard Cohen fan. I was starting time introduced to Leonard's earth as an angst-ridden fifteen yr sometime when I borrowed "Songs Of Leonard Cohen;" I saw him for the commencement fourth dimension, two years later at Sheffield City Hall in 1974.

My background is as a sculptor having studied at St Martin'southward in London and have shown my work effectually the Great britain including a Tate Gallery touring show. I taught in London for 25 years, at the same time standing to make sculpture and graphic piece of work.

In the nineties, I started producing super-enlarged pastel drawings from Natural Forms and became a successful artist including a major commission of 6 fish paintings for Sir Terence Conran, at the Smashing Eastern Hotel and for other businesses and homes. I'm still working from Natural Forms and have an exhibition coming up in London in October of recent work. Over the last year I have also developed more involvement in narrative paintings from my extensive puppet drove and using photomontage from postcards to tell stories and illustrate ideas and feelings.

Light Every bit The Cakewalk Video

Having been a huge Leonard Cohen fan all my life, it seemed obvious to take his words as a starting point for these images. This involvement in story telling has now moved on some other step and I have started to use my own photographs and images to produce basic video/animation/morphs and following on from my contempo "From Angst to Enlightenment" morph and stop move "Bob'southward Record Collection" and I have at present adult my earlier "Lite every bit a Breeze" dandelion morph into a full blown video. (Much of my piece of work can be found at www.martinferrabee.com. I am here to share my love of Beauty and of course Leonard Cohen.)

Light As The Breeze is i of Leonard Cohen'southward most sensual and erotic songs, and I have tried to integrate into my video some universal human body shapes. Leonard refers to these parts in the song equally the Delta, Alpha and Omega.

Using dandelion "fairies" as a metaphor for something 'light equally a breeze", I accept taken the stalks, seed heads and "fairies" equally my basic visual building blocks to create a quasi-erotic narrative. I used well-nigh twenty nonetheless photographs morphed in pairs, and so joined together, reversed in places and treated with filters to create the final montage.

The whole song moves along at a slow dreamy pace but is divided into three distinct sections. At the showtime Leonard describes the act of kneeling earlier the Alpha and Omega equally an human action of worship, wonderment and pleasure. This develops in the next two verses into a greater sense of self disgust and questioning of his sexual needs, having spent "too long on his knees" but this is resolved at the end where he learns that despite relationships being not always ideal "blood on every bracelet" he can still find a temporary cure for his woes "below that resplendent chemise".

I accept tried to reflect these iii stages in the piece; calorie-free at the beginning, using darker more abstract forms and colours in the centre department; with a cold frosty section before the concluding return to ecstasy at the terminate.

Lite Every bit The Breeze is ane of my favorite songs – beautiful, sensual and raising important Life questions – but hey this is Leonard Cohen.

Video: Dandelion Fairies & Leonard Cohen'south Low-cal As The Breeze By Martin Ferrabee
Video by Martin Ferrabee

Share this post