And, since conflict results from a breakdown of communication and consequent loss of relationship, the inference is that something is getting in the way, estranging us from our neighbours and surroundings. I unconsciously represented my feelings about this attitude problem over 25 years ago, in two paintings. This painting, made after my final examinations, depicts the dynamic complexity of living systems. A night-bird follows the stream past intricately interwoven forest towards darkness. A dragonfly luxuriates below a fruit-laden tree, bereft of leaves.
Life is wild, wet and full of surprises.
This painting, made after a year of postgraduate research, depicts the limitations of unempathic, analytical methodology. At the end of a long pilgrimage, access to life is barred from the objective stare by the rigidity of artificial boundaries. A sun composed of semicircle and triangles is caught between straight lines and weeps sundrops into a canalized watercourse. Moonlight, transformed into penetrating shafts of fear encroaches across the night sky above a plain of desolation. Life is withdrawn behind closed doors.