Carousels
I call these paintings my carousel paintings, because of the travel of the eye. Being 3-5 metres long, the viewer can almost read them from left to right. But the dynamism of the mark-making invites the eye to circulate in and around the painting in all directions and back again, almost ceaslessly, giving the effect of a procession, or a carousel. They need to be experienced in person, so that the scale can truly perform.
The Weight of Passion
Oil on paper, 302x130cm, £4950
This painting began from an impulse to make manifest a feeling that was of such scale that it defied the scope of the word feeling. By creating the heavy, dense passages of crimson alizarin, I was trying to give form or maybe permanence to something that had appeared in my life that felt akin to birth, in that everything had to adjust to make room for it. The only way to impart its scale and anchor these passages, was by contrasting more flighty and translucent marks around it. These lighter fields almost danced and teased the original areas, lending the energy of a flirtation, without compromising the intended gravity.
The Flight of the Melody
Oil on paper, 470x130cm, £4950
The Flight of the Melody reflects an unbound procession through time, heady and joyous from its own sensation of becoming. This painting is charged with an untethered energy that entices flight, or bloom. Like the paradox of a pinned butterfly behind glass, we are asked to look intently at something whose beauty could only be expressed in the freedom of time let loose. Nowhere here, is there a landing place for formality or analysis. In the rolling, beribboned helix of the central passage, words are redundant. Any grasping for structure will surely slip by while the painting glances back to laugh.