Sunday, January 17, 2010

Ascend - descend - transcend





CB - from Hidden Depths series - Oil & liquin on paper, 2010  (detail)

The drawings and paintings I'm working on at the moment are explorations of perception and memory; contemplations on the ephemeral-yet-enduring nature of it all. Do we need to descend in order to ascend and - ultimately - transcend? 

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"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed or governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings" wrote William Blake 


7 comments:

  1. depths and flight - layers and waves. Beautiful.

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  2. Lovely and strong. Movement. The yellows especially.

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  3. Claire, this is stunning. The colors!

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  4. claire - amazing light and shadow and flow. have recently been struck again just how valuable it is to recognise and embrace polar opposites in life paradoxes - ephemeral and enduring; descending / ascesion; light and shadow

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  5. Kay, Mim, T. Clear, Steve - thank you for these affirmations. The space beneath water (and especially beneath ice) has a clarity and ambiguity that is extraordinary. Sometimes, it's so clear it's difficult to believe there's any tangible substance/medium there at all - divers and drifting creatures appear to float on air. It's a liminal space, really, on the edge of dreaming and waking. A space to get both lost and found in.

    These paintings are part of a larger body of work I'll be engaged with all year. There'll be a short film or two to accompany the 2D images. Silent, probably. And circular in the way meditation pieces tend to be?

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  6. I keep looking at them. I'm not done looking at them because they're different each time I look which means there is something there for me. Beautiful by the way but more than that. Hopeful maybe.

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  7. A hopeful flotilla - a flotilla of hope.

    Thank you for this, Radish.

    This sequence of images wants to say something about the place of the individual within the collective and vice versa, so it's a treat to hear you say you keep looking at them - I like the idea of paintings as company; places we can return to for stimulation, meditation, silence, conversation...

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