Shifting Landscapes Blog

Contemporary Photography & Abstract Art by Alistair Keddie

Geometric Abstractions: Mushroom Clouds, Water Fights and System Collapse

Mushroom Clouds And Water Fights Unite! (2026) is a frenzied geometric abstraction that stages a violent collision between system and collapse.

Abstract painting filled with jagged black scaffold-like shapes cutting diagonally across a tan and orange background. Bright red and orange bursts suggest explosions, while patches of blue with circular, gear-like patterns appear throughout. At the lower right, a smeared white mushroom cloud rises upward. Fine white lines overlay the scene like maps or circuitry. Near the centre, a stylised head-like form with mechanical details emerges, and dark paint drips pull the composition downward, creating a sense of chaotic collapse. — Mushroom Clouds And Water Fights Unite! (2026)

Heavy black scaffold-like forms slice diagonally across the surface, not just structuring but obstructing the image, fragmenting a dense field of red and orange explosions, patterned geometry, and tan ground. From the lower right, a smeared, painterly white mushroom cloud erupts—phallic and contaminating—destabilising an already collapsing network.

Across the composition, blue passages threaded with concentric, gear-like motifs suggest contested flows—water, energy, or data—embedded within a mechanised system. These are overlaid with intricate white linear markings that read as both cartographic symbols and analytical tracings: targets, routes, circuitry, as if the scene is simultaneously constructed and mapped.

At the centre, a hybrid head-like form—part mask, part machine—anchors the chaos, implying a consciousness entangled within the system it cannot control. Below, dark vertical smears drag the composition downward, reinforcing a sense of failed elevation and systemic breakdown. Human presence is reduced to fleeting silhouettes, overwhelmed by the very structures they inhabit, as the painting resolves into a vision of organised, technological violence collapsing under its own weight.

Another quick studio visit to a very recent digital painting that continues this ongoing theme around war. It’s pretty much done for now and will let it rest for a while amongst its kin. As ever, I’m keen to hear your thoughts on this work and others in the gallery.