Shoal Arts
cooperative
SINCE 2015
Medium:
Black writing ink, rainwater (collected from Longrun Meadows, Taunton) on found board. Box framed.
Black writing ink, floodwater (collected from Longrun Meadows, Taunton), and beeswax on found solder board.
I am a painter with a long term interest in alchemy and the philosophical sciences and how they help us to understand our landscape and our place within it, particularly how the traditionally held metaphysical stages of alchemy: nigredo (blackness), albedo (whiteness), citrinitas (yellowing) and rubredo (redness) might appear visually in relation to phenomena within the natural environment.
Recent work has focused on a visual understanding of the dark, inky flux of nigredo, the immersive, incubatory first stage of alchemy, as experienced through the element of water. Current work investigates the second stage, albedo, and seeks to illustrate the transformational action of light and order upon the dark, swirling waters of the Nekyia, Jung’s “night journey on the sea”.
'Flood' (2013) and 'December' (2013) are both comprised of found surfaces – the back of a picture frame, a discarded solder board - which have been repeatedly inundated with an inky, black flood. Their prior state has been washed away. They are now something other, something more.
