Moving out (to be exhibited elsewhere on this website) is the first series of a number of bodies of work (collectively titled Vortices), which, in terms of structure, are influenced by Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations and by research into the recently created antihydrogen, the antimatter version of the Hydrogen atom.
Elgar's sequence of orchestral works was arranged in the whole around an 'unknown centre', thus the 'enigma' of the title; he spoke of a 'dark saying' that was 'never played' throughout the series of Variations:
The Enigma I will not explain - its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn yoiu that the connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes', but is not played...So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas...the chief character is never on the stage.
- Edward Elgar
In Enigma Variations, Elgar announces the 'void' at the centre of the series, and casts it as a positive fulcrum, the way that a secret is paradoxically both a lack and a positive figure at the same time; so too, in the Vortices projects, the connections between works will be clustered around an indeterminate centre of gravity.
The Enigma I will not explain - its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn yoiu that the connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes', but is not played...So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas...the chief character is never on the stage.
- Edward Elgar
In Enigma Variations, Elgar announces the 'void' at the centre of the series, and casts it as a positive fulcrum, the way that a secret is paradoxically both a lack and a positive figure at the same time; so too, in the Vortices projects, the connections between works will be clustered around an indeterminate centre of gravity.
The painting Urchin Heart, recently completed, alludes to a theme that unites all of the bodies of work within the Vortices projects.
Urchin Heart
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas 60 x 110 cm
Inward Breath Now, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38cm
Hiero-grief, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38 cm
I Want to Do Something Real, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38 cm
Inward Breath Now, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38cm
Hiero-grief, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38 cm
I Want to Do Something Real, gouache on Paper, 25 x 38 cm