★ ECLIPSE Almanac page 21 ★

Everything looks quite playful, it's like things are jumping here and there. Each painting is a unit yet it is fragmented in a way in which you can either choose to focus on the part or on the whole. Firstly the painting is what it portrays, the character it embodies and the narrative it foretells. Second is the fragments of the painting, the forms that construct it. This is what makes the paintings playful. A song rays through them, each form leads to another creating a flow both within a single painting but also through them as a group. A melody is there. This melody is made by the flow of forms and the harmony of the colours. I feel it is this melody that is most apparent. It is the first thing you see and somehow it takes over and drives you within it. I feel it is this melody that I get lost in.

A joyous flamboyance, a pleasant lightheadedness in a comforting dance with form and colour. Naive expressions of a diligent player conducted in jaunty unison. Each phrase held together by the thought of possibility. New discoveries exciting the imagination while letting go and drifting in the sanguine fray. Constructed with craft and reverence only to make fun of itself. Humouring existence, enjoying the bliss of a jam-packed now.

Like the recording of a song, time is captured within the painting. There are no mistakes, everything that happens composes what there is. The choices you make, whether right or wrong are what comprise you, experience builds personality. An earnest honesty reassuring what is.

Form is a vehicle for meaning. It is treated as a narration tool or a representational element that creates a character. At the same time, it’s used as a building block where information can be inserted as colour, texture or pattern. In this way, a painting can be both a figurative and abstract composition.

Despite their descriptive outline, forms are seen as a flat space that can encompass meaning. Following the ideas of the mid-20th-century movement of colour field painting with artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, these forms are used as spaces where the expressiveness of colour can be celebrated showing its temperament and feel. Each one is worked on and matured or otherwise left young and hastily made. Whereas some things take a long time to fulfil their purpose others serve their function without too much thought. Each brushstroke marking emotion, each surface a journey in itself. Depth is found in the range of emotions captured in the layers of paint rather than in the depiction of space.

Expanding on this idea the surface of the form is seen not only as a platform for expression yet as a place where information can be placed. Even though used in a remotely different way this can be seen as a form of a billboard or add space within the painting in regard to the multiplicity of possible information exposed there. They can be seen as cut-outs from a magazine or a piece of textile that is placed on the canvas and then built on top of. These spaces are used to bring further contextual meaning to the painting.

The representational functions of the forms are rounded interpretations of an ideal. The abstraction of the form uses ideas found in illustration, cartoons and graphic design, it asks what is the simplest way to convey a meaning. A meaning of an arm or head or an eye. In order to derive those definitions, it draws upon our ideals. Ideals that are an amalgamation of representations found all throughout culture whether it is pop trends, video games, folk or religious art or depictions from a specific place’s history and tradition. As we are constantly around them we relate to these models to a point where our perception and our subconscious ideals are defined by them. Fair and righteous, ugly and bad, fragile or powerful, guilty or proud, there is an image in our head for each of these traits. By posing a simple form distilled from these ideals we are presented with an empty vessel that is filled with personal experiences and subconscious identities.

Each form takes its part within the whole, revealing a figure, the portrayal of a character. Each one telling its own story with its own origins and trials. Standing in front of you, their presence becomes apparent as their tales unfold. Mythological and historical references create a narration that invokes a spiritual dimension to the work. Binary definitions break down uniting into a primal understanding of existence where meagre segregations give way to the totality of the human experience.

Faith is a determining factor of identity whether it comes as an ethical or moral position, a political standpoint, aesthetic associations or religious beliefs. Ever since the beginning of humanity, we have used mythology and religion in order to find meaning in our realities. In order to understand ourselves and our surroundings. The depictions of these contemplations have formed the origins of culture. Initially as paintings of animals on cave walls, later as sun gods and now as evil presidents inspiring critical scrutiny and spreading out merch. The things we believe in have formed the cultures we have developed for our communities. Whole civilisations, empires and nation groups characterised by beautifully intricate and sophisticated aesthetics or otherwise slam-dunk statement mottos. The cultures we belong in and the mythologies that we choose to believe in form who we are thus making claim to the remark, mythology as identity.

There is a beautiful freedom to this statement as it transcends cultural and social separations. By the deification of individuality, it can empower all identities and ways of being. Stating identity as something fluid and changing our spiritual selves can be celebrated. Entranced by our music we can dance and fight and make love as we truly are.