Out of Darkness

The curious business of creatures developing in darkness was weighing me down a little when I first met this tree, with its interesting chamber.  I liked the 'creature' developing inside. It suggested the violence of birth, the tooth and claw survival of the form emerging within the tree cavity. At the same time, there's a sense of shelter, branches growing within the enclosure of the trunk. A tree within a tree.

These images are studies, portraits of landscape. My fascination comes down to an addiction to metaphor. 


And painting? Maybe it's the desire to create an illusion, through the alchemy of colour, and the ritual building of a surface. Most of a painting is never seen. Heavier colours support the light; the underside of the visible, a dark substructure. Maybe it's an effort to capture moments of illumination and connection, and learn the experience in the process of building and reshaping with paint. The transformation of a subject through the intent of the human alembic. Maybe it's about taking childish delight in making a mess, being playful. 

Drawing ideas out of darkness. This is amusing. Developing said ideas is where it gets interesting. Getting it right; well, that's something else again. Still working on that.