Sailing To Byzantium

Brothers I

Hurtlocker

The Conversation

A Marble Index of a Mind Forever

Counterpoint

What Lies Beneath  

Being & Nothingness

Something From Nothing

Time Immemorial, the Authentic Strives to No Place

The Very Precipice

 Only So Far

Help! We all need it, it’s one of the most beautiful things to give and receive. Help can give us purpose, be an opportunity to express love and kidness or simply let us hope for a-little longer it’s eventually going to be ok. Indeed, the very success of the human race is perhaps in our ability to help each other emotionally, economically and by sharing knowledge. We do so in good faith that eventually some act of kindness will come our way too.

But every helping hand has it’s shadow. With the best intentions, we sometimes find ourselves jumping into a situation head first, without actually considering the limits of ourassistance:
The mother who convinces her young boy that he cannot survive without her help. Leaving the boy with learned helplessness, incapable when overcoming life’s hurdles. The ‘Nice Guy’ (or Girl) who dotes on the every desire people around them, exhausted and starving themselves of their own needs. The Enabler, paying for a friend’s rent when it really flows towards addiction. Some people drown in interpersonal drama to enlist help; sometimes to feel important, test alliances or even just to know someone is there to catch them.

Often help can be a disempowerment of responsibility we have to ourselves, as capable active agents in the world, able to fend off dangers, self soothe and solve problems. There are limits, in so far as help’s burden doesn’t pull one under or encourage the distressed to stay submerged in a deluge of their own illusory incapacity. So whilst help is arguably the core of love, sometimes, my hands can only reach so far.

In the Loving Care of Animal Spirits

You’re On Your Own, But Not Alone

Emancipated Femme

Blast Radius

Mother, Mother

Genesis

How Long Must This Silence Echo?

Encerrado

An Image of Your Future

How Green Is The Grass?

Avoidance

Waving, Drowning

Since the turn of the 20th century new forces took-over our collective
consciousness. The Age of Science and the Individual began to replace the order of the Church. The discovery of evolution and advancements in physics destroyed the supernatural in Christianity. The World Wars, Atom Bomb, Spanish Flu and Great Depression produced the ‘lost generation’ a generation where Gods purity turned into nihilism. There could be no noble meaning to such horror.  This nihilism soon gave way to an existential realisation: In a godless world, we were the central characters in the phenomena of being.

Realising our responsibility to choose meaning rather than have it prescribed by some deity, handed significance over to the Secular. Churches were replaced by art galleries and music venues. Saints and Profits became thinkers, artists and celebrities. The individual became the master.

Fuck, 2020,
Oil on linen , 95x57cm

..., 2020,
Oil on linen , 95x57cm

The Eventual End

The Eventual End, Salk Institute, 2020,
Oil on linen, 200cm x 200cm

An event as cataclysmic as the end of humanity is something embedded in our collective consciousness. On a cosmic level, the ephemeral presence of humanity is a blip in the strangeness of the universe, something we all know must end. Despite this end, it is curious that we can more easily imagine the end of humanity at the hands of an asteroid impact, or virus, than from self-destructive and perpetual consumption; because wxho can imagine the end of capitalism?

Humanity’s attempt to leave an indelible mark on the planet, through art, discovery or the continuation of a family bloodline all amounts to nothing in the eventual end.

But the horror of our own annihilation can be accepted with dignity rather than a cacophony of panic. A final ‘well…it’s been fun’ would suffice, after all, we’ve already seen and done so much.

Entanglement

Relationships are not objects that we can put on a shelf and looked at, their front, back, shape and borders cannot be seen. At best they can be represented, contained as mementos and symbols of connection: a holiday photo or wedding ring. These symbolic flourishes are only reflections of an intangible connection. When two people stand side by side, they can touch, but the real connection is woven together by invisible threads, felt only by them.

New threads nurture intimacy but present more wires on which to trip. Fall once and relationships can entwine into a confusing mass. Connection constricts, lines become misunderstood, others step in to be entangled. A form too large to understand, love, is knotted.
Suddenly there is beauty in its antithesis: freedom.

Whilst this invisible mass is untangled, the holiday photo looks down blissfully unaware, permanently portraying yesterday’s connection. 

Merge-Separate, Tension-Release

The vulnerability of love is manifest in deep connection and tension expressed in moments of physical affection. It is a dance of interlocking beings, capable of cultivating some of the strongest and most rewarding emotions in our emotional field. When we bond with another, we find ourselves in chains. Chains which are sources of great power welded together by unbreakable trust.

But equally, we are captured by the movements and desires of the other, vulnerable to the tension of two souls pulling in different directions. Reconciling a capitulation of the self and an authentic expression of ones inner-world strikes a delicate balance in which everything can be gained and lost.  The fear and beauty found in the power of love.

Innocence Lost

Objects of Desire

Sublimity comes from somewhere beyond, or deeper than immediate sensation - it cannot be literally visualised. Thus, figures in the Sublime Affliction series interact with mysterious overbearing entities, sources of sublime power, fear and anxiety.

Like other paintings, this artwork features the interior spaces of an art gallery and other artists work, in this case the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) and part of ‘Objects of Desire’ by Laurence Weiner.

Luke I
Luke II

Brother & Sally