the art of seeing
Stepping into the forest one is surrounded by a smorgasbord of colours, forms, smells and textures. And if one hunts enough, you find exceptional spots, where elements of plant, rock, earth and water coalesce in dramatic fashion. Individual actors coming together to play the sum of their parts to form fascinating stories.
These players may have already taken their bows many years earlier, and are devolving into soil, but the power of their performances with their peers still echo through the woods. One clashes with another, the vanquished split and rotting under its conqueror, who may be in turn upstaged by another. What intrigues me about the natural world is the continual dichotomy between the brutal reality of survival, and the visual beauty of perfect design.
My principle medium is acrylic paint because I enjoy the immediacy of the process. I like the tactile and plastic quality. A human made product to interpret our human vision. I freely explore variety in methodology with the application of paint, that acrylics provide.
There never is uniformity in the wild, and yet there is always a harmony that our minds have the ability to create out of that chaos. This is fascinating. And whether it's a deviant colour, an improbably balanced branch, a beam of aberrant light, or a thousand other surprises, it's this free radical in the forest that can vault the inherent dialogue between humans and nature into preternatural heights.