This week’s word is liminality, from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It describes the space between what was and what’s next: the moment of suspension before transformation takes hold. Doorways, bridges, shorelines at low tide. They sit between states, quietly holding their breath. Portals.
It feels especially relevant now. The year itself stands on a threshold, Halloween, Samhain, the turning from light to dark. It’s a season of mist, falling leaves, and veiled boundaries, when stories say the worlds of the living and the spirit are nearer together. And in a wider sense, the world feels liminal too, politically, socially, spiritually, caught between old systems that no longer fit and new ways that haven’t yet formed.
Liminal times can be uncomfortable, but they’re also profoundly creative. In art, it’s that gap between a painting starting and being resolved, the slow breath before I paint. In photography, it’s the half-light of dawn or dusk, reflections that merge two worlds, the beauty of what’s half-seen.
The featured image is dawn at Avebury Stone Circle a couple of weeks ago, an especially magical liminal time!
It’s also bridges, shorelines, doorways, dusk and dawn – lots of inspiration there.
So this week I’m embracing the edges, noticing transitions, and trusting that what feels unresolved is quietly remaking itself.
Liminality reminds me that thresholds aren’t endings; they’re beginnings in disguise.
My liminal photography this week, dawn, a bridge, low tide and my favourite doorway.
Ailsa Brims Art 