Walkers Find The Light Painting

A friend of mine went on a walking weekend on the Brecon Beacons in Wales with her friends and posted up photographs from the weekend on social media. What struck me in these photos was the vastness of the landscape and the relative smallness of the human beings toiling across it.They looked so vulnerable and their waterproofs and outdoor attire seemed so flimsy in the face of the forces of nature all around them that I felt moved to make a piece of work around it. Another story fed into this painting. I saw, some 20 years ago, an investigative television documentary into the effects a book written by a `spiritual leader` had had on its more vulnerable readers. The `spiritual leader` was advocating that it was possible to live on nothing but light, but that a step-guide to spiritual enlightenment (her book!) should be followed to reach a state wherein food and water could be dispensed with altogether. As you can imagine, this attracted many vulnerable souls. The ultimate ritual that she promised would bring on this desired state was to spend several weeks with minimal food and water, alone in an isolated place in nature. This led to a number of deaths among those people who attempted this `rite of passage`, dying alone in exposed mountainous regions, hypothermic and malnourished. This seemed to me to echo the ancient rituals of self-denial, isolation and introspection so central to many ancient religions, as a means of achieving greater insight and spiritual purity. It also smacked of the vulnerability of human desire, need and survival. The light of what appears to be the sun emanates from the right hand side of the painting, and the walkers are facing this source, but appear to have been caught up on the tree, dangling, vulnerable and helpless. The tree looks like a lop-sided crucifix. Scraps of paper scatter across the landscape. The references are there....