realisation and glimpses of resolution in the wayward distance… 

ins and outs

counting

rote numbers 

long and short

missing beats

heart panic shiver

sense the space gapping

to shudder back again

into deep, 

into refresh

This painting is about awareness in the moment.

In some ways it has become like a distillation of the whole “breath” work.

The palette is subtle and subdued.

It has a rhythm to the mark making that pleases me. I had been experimenting a lot with monoprinting in my sketchbook and found the textural quality of lines rich and exciting. When I printed onto wet oil paint, the fragmentation of the marks was thrilling!

tell me again 

another version of breathing

show me it’s real…

And in the same vein as “bide in the breath”, here is an inner challenge to feel deeply beyond the interference of anxiety.

I suppose it’s about wanting to feel ok about being me, in my quiet and my particularness.

It’s a bit unusual for me to be painting on such defined “landscape” format panels. I favour squares generally but I really enjoyed the difference in approach these boards offered.

It seems a bit strange now that it took a while for me to realise that I was in a way making skyscapes. 

Abstract metaphors for big unifying skies.

In this painting I wanted to develop the notion of communion.

As usual the title came first. 

I love playing with words and the idea of “skying” as a state of being was so evocative for me. Just as I embrace “breathing wingbeat air”, then skying becomes the encapsulation of that idea.

It’s about lifting ourselves up, beyond petty divisions and man made constructs which undermine interdependency, to affirm life in a shared egalitarian space.

No separation.

the sky and the air

and the dark and the light

this is how I learnt to breathe

I was imagining that the place I returned to, where I lived as a little child, knew me.

It was a time before fear entwined itself around my bones.

This big sky was imprinted on me and would be forever attached and known.

It was home, a safe place where I wasn’t scared to look up and think of possibilities.

breathe in and out

a flow, a smudge, a billow

open and hopeful

remember no less

the reason, the depth, the whole

the meaning of breath

In this painting I wanted to express an easier resolution of ideas where the completeness of the smallest entity could be placed as necessary within the whole.

This is communion, I think, in stillness.

Then there is a collaborative forward movement to which I attach a sense of open hopefulness.

Visually I think this is a softer painting with flowing, blended applications of paint. I wanted light too. 

Certainly I was in a calmer mood while painting.

There is always texture in the surface marks but here they seem more settled and controlled among deeper shadows built up in layers of paint.