Victorine Meurent and her crayons Painting

"There is no beauty without some strangeness" - Edgar Allan Poe--------------- Josh Honeyman lives near Blackheath close to the highest point of the Blue Mountains. Once or twice a year it snows, turning the region into a white wonderland. In summer it's green with rocky escarpments close at hand, rising out of the dense bushland. What better place to imagine a world of hushed enchantment, far from the humdrum of the world's hysteria. At news hour, we turn on the TV to absorb the horrors of war, terrorism, the tragedy of daily life, the cynicism of politics, the infractions of sports stars, the bleak outlook for our planet. It's the burden of the everyday. Is there more to life than this ? Artists sometimes want to transport us elsewhere, into the realm of the imagination where the human spirit can roam unrestricted. Josh Honeyman takes us there, into visionary landscapes, reimagining the world through a host of signs, symbols and haunting scenarios. Arcane narratives are suggested, ones steeped in myth, portents and divinations. There's love, death, poetry, mystery, wizardry, far beyond anything the camera can offer. The fact that Honeyman is a highly skilled painter allows him to convince us of the validity of these alternative realms. We know these places well, in our dreams, in our mythology, in our recorded history. Let's go there, not all the time, but long enough to recognise that the human spirit is more than just a receptacle for the banal pragmatism and dull conventions of Western rationalism. Robert Hollingworth, 2019 .honeyman.96