Carry

This image has been on my mind for some time, several years in fact. The sloping ground is based on one of the family farm fields, the ‘High Field’. The Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down is the underlying idea. Here, I’m nearing the top of the ‘high field’ and the rope that I’m pulling my father up the slope with is about to snap. The coffin will slide back down to the bottom of the field, and the whole pulling exercise will begin again. It’s about living with long term bereavement from suicide. Forever grateful to my late mother for taking two photographs of my father lying in the funeral home.

Bedroom at Dawn

Times of the year when daylight gets rapidly longer or shorter (late March and April, October) tend to bring out vivid dreams or nightmares for me. I wake at dawn. I’m exploring that in-between moment when the dream is still fresh and you’re not sure where you are. The wood of suicides from Dante’s Inferno features in the middle in the door area and various personal memories surround it. Limited palette of ultramarine blue, raw umber and bluish silver. I painted it in casein and it gives a unique look.

Dead Wood

Dead Wood Watermark

An old piece of dead Elm bark from the farm.  The most interesting thing I’ve ever painted.