Flux Aeterna #1 Drawing

Born 1951 in London

The Flux Aeterna project commenced in August 1990 with the development of a single imperfect curve. I was, at the time, only faintly aware of the thought processes that had attracted me to the idea, but, as the drawings proceeded, I found much of the activity to be mechanical. I was, therefore, able to reflect at some length upon the genesis of the work, and also upon many aspects of its aesthetic and psychological significance.

I have attempted here to set out some of these reflections and to impose some sort of order and coherence upon them. I should make it clear, however, that I can promise nothing that would amount to a rationale, explanation or justification. Instead, I offer a modest record of some of the thoughts that have formed and accompanied the making of a series of acrylic ink drawings. The series is incomplete, and, I suspect, must necessarily remain so. Much the same can be said for the thoughts...

In July 1990 I afforded myself the luxury of a day spent in various public and commercial art galleries in London. I saw paintings and drawings of every type and from every era. I ended the day, before returning home, by passing a bookshop specialising in exotic travel. In the window was an enormous relief map of part of the Himalayas. Deeply and suddenly fascinated by the flowing density of its contours, I was surprised to find that I drew more pleasure from the map than anything else I had seen that day.

In a popular discussion of cosmological themes I came across the engaging speculation that the entirety of existence is owed to a single random disturbance in the primordial waveform. 'Being', it would seem, is nothing more than the relentless and often chaotic development of this irregularity.

All we have, our only means of understanding, is the picture. The totality of our discourse, internal and external, is by way of analogy - by means of various kinds of pictures. We tend to think of maps as a special, very powerful but limited, type of picture. But perhaps we should regard every picture as really just a type of map - an attempt to make a diagram of an area of thought.

Flux Aeterna could be regarded, perhaps mischievously, as a philosophical enquiry into the nature of change and movement, conducted within cartographic parameters - because some truths cannot be explained, they can only be drawn. The pen is mightier than the word...