Spring: September, October 2008 - below is a series of journal sketches followed by mixed media works on paper exper-imenting with ideas using pods and seeds picked up locally. The second sketch is a photo-shopped abstracted pod drawing overlayed with a sketch inspired by a Blossfeldt image and the quote taken from Humboldt's 'View of nature' The works on paper were an exercise in composition, colour and form in preparation for applying various ideas to large canvas works.
This last work is a small 13 x 18 cm oil painting on canvas board that I've kept as a personal symbol from 2004. It had a certain cocoon-like quality that gave it a strangely totemic feeling - quite a subjective response, but nevertheless it is always to be found in the studio reminding me of the symbolic thinking around seed pod forms. The quick sketch from a journal shown at the top of these images deals with dispersion in the more abstract sense. The 5th image from the top in warm red tones is the one still to be painted that I am probably most interested in. As a visual idea it correlates strongly to the work on the theme of fluidity carried out in Newcastle going back over a period of a few years. The dispersal of seeds is hinted at as is the cyclic nature of the seed.
