Page 4 - Voyages of deire catalogue P D F

Cold, dark and desperate though John Franklin’s venture was, the epitome of high Victorian drama, it was
Jane the woman and her search which was where my interests lay. The paintings became about desire and hope, about perseverance and love. They are about the intuitive pursuit and imaginative projection unto the
unknown.
Figures move between states of desire; they embrace fear and forgetting as they move within and against the landscape to discover a place within a world that is neither past nor future, but exists only now – below our line of vision.
For me, Jane’s story exists as an imagining framework, a metaphor for our relationship with the land, and the paintings must evoke a landscape that is the site of dreams, always about connection or a desire for connection. They exist in that space that only painting can achieve: a timeless world in which geographical lies may hold cultural truths; where there is a capacity to produce a sense of transcendence in the beholder; an impression that could be described as time standing still or as an unexplainable response that elicits deep emotion: a half- remembered memory of a place or time, or both, known from long ago.
At times ,it seems as though I am stalking a ghost, but a ghost that is also real,
I am constantly reminded of the “humanity’ of history. Coming into contact with original hand written documents re-affirms how close we are to people in our past, how little we have changed . Our toys are radically different but our hearts remain the same, when we shed contemporary prejudices we remain as we always were .
The paintings have expanded intuitively in the studio (as they always do) and now that they are finally finished I am left with a feeling that is like emerging from a deep forest into clear air with a view of a distant horizon.
Everything is possible and the world has no limits .