These images grew in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a way to somehow process the constant live stream of atrocities bombarding us through our phones each day.
They do not depict any particular event but instead respond through abstraction to the overwhelming psychological distress and dystopian horror at the inhumanity of the relentless carnage still underway. Worse too, the inaction, silence and complicity of the powerful globally to stop this horrific crime against humanity.
The works raise and attempt to process many complex thoughts and feelings. A desire to learn more about the conflict, a need to offload, exhaustion, overwhelm, a point of calm amongst flood of information, a way to process the horrific digital witness we are forced to bear as innocents are mown down with impunity and our governments complicit help.
Warheads (2023-24) is a layered and complex abstract painting where two sides clash in violent confrontation. On one, an organic mass of shapes and writhing line meets the other more regimented and mechanised march of repeated geometric forms. Strong colours abound with blue, yellow and red primaries in vibrant confusion, upset by black, white and flashes of green. The surface is a complicated mash of jarring shapes, scrawling line, patterns, textures and colour. Suggestions of heads, eyes and faces emerge from the mass only to be overwhelmed and broken apart. Fragments of objects, a bottle, a kettle seem to tumble forth in the face of a relentless march from the right as an army of white cross like symbols march. Evoking grave yards, target markers, even aircraft, tanks, shrouds or soldiers, pressing forward into the centre sowing red and yellow flashes of explosion and flame. Somewhere behind this overwhelming noise, the blue of the sky and a landscape of cultivated fields hosting this bloody struggle.
Watering Fields Of Poppy (2024) is a densely tangled abstract painting evoking strong feelings of loss and grief. Rivers of sinuous blue snake and flow down the canvas like tears, the watering of the title. The ground is a hazy wash of muted orange and purple washes, interspersed with fragments of line and occasional discs of gold leaf. Across this landscape, black lined ovals with dark green dot pattern seed pods hover, fringed red with petals like wounds or flowers, some watchful eyes, others lingering drones above a field of poppy. Through this, two snaking white lines suggest the presence of faces looking out mournfully and tearful from the packed and fractured surface. A deep sadness pervades the scene but also, like these scattered seeds suggest, regrowth from the watering of this land.
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