The Messel Oil Shale Quarry Print

The landscape can be beautiful and it can be terrifying. Even in the Twenty-First Century - raw nature without the protective veneer of civilization may still provoke a deep-seated fear - just as it certainly had before the development of towns and cities. The landscape will always be filled with dangers and perils because we are not yet winged spiritual beings - rather mortal and connected to the earth - and always at risk from the hazards of the world. Deep down we know this. There is nothing we connect to more universally than the ordinary earth that we stand on - the earth is the glue that binds every human. There is nothing more commonplace than landscape and paradoxically nothing more profound. There are no truly straight lines in nature - they are a conceptual overlay - an abstract radical borderland that we place upon nature. Radical because human borders can change in an instant - as opposed to the eternal landscape where change is measured in millennia. The abstract elements in my paintings may suggest an otherwise unseen rational presence - linear and mappable - outside the realm of nature. I am a painter foremost. But technically I employ unconventional painting techniques. These have evolved through trial and error by accident and design over many years. The subject matter of my paintings tap deep into my own unconscious. It's a dark place. I could not teach my technique. I believe that somewhere along the way an effect of the civilizing aspect of two thousand years of Western culture has been to schism our spiritual and intellectual selves from our emotional and physical nature. Thus I feel we live in a world seriously in need of healing. I believe the highest role an artist can play is that of healer - the resolver of opposites.