Murmur Painting

The title Murmur refers both to sound and rumour. I made this work while I was living in Plymouth which is home to 12 nuclear submarines docked nearby and 'cooling off'. The stories that we don't quite know are true, sometimes deliberately obfuscated, are markers for something we need to know. Like the escalation of sound in oceans is affecting sea life. Creatures that rely on sound such as whales and dolphins who use echolocation are increasingly affected by our incursion into their territories. I have used a mixture of media and hand-made pigments from land on stained canvas in order to create a leakage or resist from one media to another, to mirror human leakage of sound and toxic pollution into the oceans. The red pigment comes from iron and refers to rust - the rusting barrels of nuclear waste dumped by humans into the oceans.