Myth of the Floating Anima Painting

I use oil paint on canvas because of it’s organic plasticity and character. Oil paint dries slowly and allows me to blend and manipulate form and color for long periods of time. This is essential because to achieve maximum expression concentration has to reach the level of obsession. Oil paint can be manipulated and has a degree of depth in terms of color and texture that I do not find with any other medium. The flowing white line that dances rhythmically around the forms is white enamel paint of the kind often used on metal. This painting is rooted in my personal philosophy of art and aesthetics drawing upon mythology, psychoanalysis and color. Rudolf Steiner’s color theory* has been an important source of inspiration for me since the early 1980s. Another inspiration is ‘The Island of the Gods’- Bali itself, where I live and work. Here color is limited mainly to shades of red and blue - hot and cool, with the addition of white for the flowing line. Three mythical figures or personages are juxtaposed. The large grotesque figure on the left is Kala, Lord of Darkness from the Balinese Hindu myth ‘The Birth of Batara Kala’. The female figure floating up to the surface out of the blue depths of the vast unconscious is the ‘Anima’, - archetype of the unconscious feminine in the male psyche. The male figure looming above her is a combination of Hanuman, the monkey-headed hero of many Hindu myths and Parsifal who appears in ancient European myths both as ‘the pure fool’ and the conquering hero. Parsifal appears repeatedly in my work as the ‘Wise Fool’.... or the ‘Warrior: Hero-Coward’, not unlike ‘The Fool on the Hill’ in the well known Beatles song. The female form rising up in the center between and above the three mythical figures accentuates the atmosphere of sensuousness and sexuality which belongs the the red family of shades. Most of these, plus other, related symbols and elements appear elsewhere in my work. In this painting, as in life, opposites at once confront, collide and unite: light-dark, red-blue, male-female, beauty-ugliness, fear-bravery. It is the eternal story of human existence both in the universal and the particular sense. The “particular” being my own, deeply personal experience. Harmonization of contrasting colors, reds and blues creates a deeply pervasive mood or atmosphere that implies water and air: shades of blue, and living, organic tissue, flesh, skin, blood: shades of red, orange and pink. Forever enigmatic, ambiguous, incongruous, the meeting of objects and elements in the painting is finally resolved as an harmonious whole. My hope is that the viewer will intuitively perceive and experience, not just this resolution and harmonization on his or her own terms, but that the painting might trigger additional, alternative insights and interpretations arising from the viewers own inner life over which I neither have, nor wish to have, any control at all. *Note Steiner’s color theory is based on Goethe’s Theory of Colors, first published in 1810.