The Gremlins inside
This piece is called ‘The Coward’. It is a relatively large painting (85cm x 120cm) and originated from a photograph of an organic object which I have digitally manipulated and then combined with oil paint.
Originally I started painting it in a different format but it presented strong connotations of landscapes and other things which closed the whole piece down for me. Visually, I prefer it portrait anyway; it seems to hang better.
When I worked on this piece, the following was playing on my mind – ideas of those subconscious and self destructive thoughts that sit inside us, like a dormant but nevertheless threatening flu bug ready to infest at any time. Negative aspects of our personality and emotions that we know are there and which can drag us down but we try to ignore. So they sit in our heads and on our shoulders burdensome, heavy and looming.
Conversely, alongside these ‘gremlins’ lies the flip side – the possibilities of better things, freedom, liberty, the imagining of wonderful opportunities, and the joy of the ‘now’ , of being alive and experiencing it all.
I hope the work gives a sense of tension and fluctuation, of both collapse and growth all at the same time; ideas I have been reading about in Gilles Deleuze the French philosopher’s book ‘The Fold’ where he discusses the thoughts and work of Leibniz writings about the Baroque.
‘Like the shift of the opposition of organic and inorganic matter into tonal flow and flux, the movement from an order of ethereal and private space over a teeming public world….The two words must fold into each other.’ (‘The Fold’, Gilles Deleuze, Continuum 2006, p xx)
The ebb and flow of our thoughts and emotions, of light and dark, paint and image, the form unforming and reforming itself. The creation of patterns and rhythm, change and transformation; like the lungs that we breathe with, the beat of our heart, the pulsating of life itself.
It is all here to be grappled with – ‘The Coward’ is inside all of us.
