Alder King
Mixed media on canvas with paper, wax, earth and leaves (sycamore, hazel, oak)
60×60cm

“The only truth is the light of your body, the cup and bird of your winter journey, your sticks and bones; the single flame of your singing soul of alder and kingcup, the willow and rose, your hands and feet, will be clean in a morning higher than waking, deeper than sleep.”

This painting has come out of a long period of introspection – a time thinking about redemption and atonement and how I might affect a ritual cleansing of sorts through painting. The result is the alder king – it owes more to odin than christ perhaps but the ideas are the same – a prayer for gnosis, to be made clean through self-sacrifice. I have also been inspired by the thought of Nikos Kazantzakis: in the painting there is both an upward movement toward synthesis, life and immortality, and a second one running downwards, to dissolution, matter and death. Both streams are part of the universe, and being so, are sacred, finding faith and unity at the centre, as symbolised by the turban.