Inscape revisited

Abstract

This article is concerned with the way in which things come to me sometimes, the way in which images arise. In particular it is concerned with imaginal perspectives on image-making processes and, in seeking such perspectives, draws on the literature of poetry and psychology. This includes a discussion of the work and ideas of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is generally credited with inventing the word inscape, a word which may be understood to describe an approach to process. Consideration is given to Jungs ideas about active imagination and to writing by Yeats from the same era. The final part of the article presents recent explorations into art-making processes involving frequent photography of emerging images, and concludes that such exercises designed to attune us to the close observation of emerging images may help to inform our practice.