Is it new? Perhaps I just redefine, keep refining ideas and never really move on – just develop and continue. My obsessions have remained the same since childhood.
My recent work centres around two new collections: Exits and Entrances and Hidden Nature. You can see the results on this page. Also, click here to see another of my recent projects: The Lock-Down Series.
Exits and Entrances
In the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare, there is a quote which refers to our busy but temporary lives here on Earth. From Act 2, Scene 7, it reads: “They have their exits and entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts”.
In my recent paintings, I explored the experiences of our enclosed lives of the past two years. Rarely walking through doors, we have experienced self-imprisonment. Physical contact and intimacy have been curtailed.
Comparing windows with doors, we see both have similar functions of separating and connecting the inside with the outside of the home. However, whereas the connection between the inside and outside produced by a door is the experience of going in and going out, the one produced by a window is one-directional, from the inside to outside: it is there for looking out, not looking in. Just as the window separates humans from objects, when we gaze at someone from behind a window we become separated from the person being seen.
Our connections changed during Covid and we have been looking in, missing our friends and families: they became the shadows behind the glass. We have been waiting for the door to open, so our lives will continue consisting of exits and entrances – a rhythm of coming and going.
Figures
When I wasn’t working on Exits and Entrances, I created some other figurative work…
Landscapes
…also, some landscapes.