Now showing at the Pierre Peeters Gallery, 251 Parnell Road, Auckland
The Confluence of Ages; Oil on Canvas, 76 x 76 cm
Here the 400 BC ruins of Delos Island in Greece are juxtaposed with the vapour trails of jets presumably on their way to Athens Airport, thus the anthropological confluence reflected also in the compositional one although the vanishing points are slightly off-set. I have avoided architecture in my work but that is because the buildings in our Pacific homes are so new, where in Europe, the age of man's constructs have all but reverted some of the buildings into the natural landscape making them some kind of hybrid, semi-organic element, not purely landscape and not purely architecture. This is a fascinating new element for me to use in future ponderings on humanity.
Youth and Entropy; Oil on Canvas, 122 x 61 cm (sold)
The freshness and vitality of youth is juxtaposed with the idea of entropy suggesting how easy it would be through ignorance and complacency for mankind to just burn itself out if greater thought isn't given to waste and sustainable energy.
Leaf Gatherers in the Season of Entropy; Oil on Linen, 300 x 100 cm (sold)
Undertaken over a 7 month period in Niue Island, this painting borrows from sources as diverse as stock-piled junk awaiting shipment after Niue's 2004 cyclone, smoke from black and white photos of the Pearl Harbour attack, the Tibetan landscape and the figures posed with pandanus leaf in Niue. The diversity of these sources underscores the fact that the purpose of all my figure paintings has little to do with the individual elements within them. The discussion in this painting is about the fast declining availability of fossil fuels and the consumer world they have created. This, through the title, I have likened to the process of entropy whereby, if something cannot be sustained by its energy source, it will die out. It also draws attention to the well established fact that hydro-carbons are a major cause of global warming while those who will be most affected by this - eg communities in the Pacific - are contributing very little to the problem. So on one level the painting is a dire warning that the world must invest more in the development of sustainable alternative energy sources, while always being reminded that, those who have not contributed to global warming are often the ones that are mostly affected by it.
Time lapse of the production of Leaf Gatherers in the Season of Entropy
Music by Renata
Gyre Vortex Jetsam Collection: Oil on Canvas, 151 x 101 cm
This painting refers to the several oceanic gyres around that world, current systems that tend to collect in their vortex's the detritus of the consumer societies which surround them. Most poignant to Pacific and to the world is the North Pacific Ocean Gyre - often called the Pacific Garbage Patch - which collects the consumer junk from North America and Asia creating huge floating masses of mainly plastic in its convergence zone North of Hawaii. This plastic does not decompose for many thousands of years but breaks down into ever smaller particles which are consumed into the food chain at every level. I have used recent garbage here for visual effect but it is a metaphor for the broken down polymers and other chemical sludge that permeate the upper columns of these oceanic vortexes. This, while using the pristinely clear waters of Niue ironically suggests what the Northern Pacific must have been like and warning the South Pacific of what it could be like without attention paid to such issues.
Lua and Segomo: War Gods in Spring, Oil on Linen, 190 x 136 cm
This goes back to an idea that has come up in my work from time to time, ie the tension between two opposites. Whether they be conflicts within the individual, between individuals or communities or between nations this seems to be an omnipresent state in the psychology of the human zeitgeist. There are no answers here and these two war gods that I have arbitrarily named as Lua, a minor Roman Goddess and Segomo a Gallic god are poised forever to be in conflict and neither will ever be pulled into the water, suggesting that humanity's penchant for war may never be overcome. Serendipitously, the landscape source in this painting, although not important to the idea, is on the Fluela Pass a few kilometres above Davos, where the EU, the IMF and the global powers have recently argued about what to do with the world economy.
Refugees from Complacency: Oil on Canvas, 157 x 51 cm
A comment on complacency being the source of mankind's many woes, this painting is meant to be more positive in that the protagonists are escaping that psychological state of mind into a world that might be more aware of the more destructive antics of humanity . This perhaps reflects the international realisation that over-population and the pollution it causes, cannot be sustained - the first step to doing something about it. It was also conceived during what we now know as the Arab Spring, where, starting with Tunisia, the masses gave up on being complacent.