his river of light

‘his river of light’
14×14cm
(ash, paper, gesso, gauze, shoe polish, oils and varnishes on canvas)

“out of my heart comes your river of light, from your body of earth in this earth of signs”

This painting is about my conviction that truth will endure, issuing from the springs of life to take on new forms, to dissolve and come round again. I found that spring in the fields and valleys where I used to walk – it was if the earth responded in a manner equal to my psychological state at that time, to my dreams, my imagination and deepest wishes. In the image I am entering the valley from the east or looking down at it from above, at the stream that runs through it, or I am looking deep into my body, someone else’s body, into the fabric of my experience – it is a celebration of it as a source of healing.

heart of silence

Heart of Silence
mixed media on canvas with oak and sweet chestnut leaf
23×23 inches

“The birds will gather silence to her body of sleep,
they will make for the south
through the noise in my mind to where the earth is mute
and his heart is clean;

they will come unhurried from the sons of rest
through the pleats of the world to where his work is hushed
and his heart is healed
in her sheltering dress.”

There was a time, some ten years ago now, when I used to step out from the house into the garden, jumping over the fence into the broad pasture. I wasn’t really aware what I was doing back then, but I think now that it was such a pure and beautiful beginning, a gateway to my communion with the earth and my growth into a man. There was an inaudible, internal sound to which I responded at the time, heard only within my heart; a profound silence that, in the making of this image, I have tried to explore and understand. The sustained focus on the clear places in my memory, day after day like a prayer, has created a kind of channel in my mind where things lost and unfulfilled can start to move. In moving, words can be spoken at last, and things find their allotted place in space and time – the earth, that was once scarred and battered, is comforted.

I wanted to cast a spell of healing, create an empty space and fill it with the breath of an ideal. Not only this, but to find a space that could speak of accomplishing things on many levels and bring them to peace and rest in different spaces through a single gesture: beginning, ending, continuity; waking, moving, rest; loss, gain, acceptance; mother, father, son; nature, home, shrine. The ambition was to have a simple, fluid image of separate moments and people in time that would otherwise remain fragmented; or, perhaps nearer the truth, to accept the fragility of personal experience but bring all these broken pieces together in a healing space and a single, unified event. The construction of the image and the rhythm of the poem organise themselves towards this moment – the silence that comes when the music has ceased and the story has ended.

Some close ups: