This work began 6 months ago. The title references a poem by Charles Baudelaire from his anthology ‘Les fleurs du mal’ (1857).

Today, looking at it in lockdown due to the Corona pandemic, the sense of yearning and desire for an imagined Utopia is more compelling than ever. The heavy octagonal shape frames another world of freedom and possibilities which seems out of reach, never to be re found.

Interesting how meaning shifts with changed circumstances, even to the maker/artist/author. 

First of a new body of work begun in 2019. The body is transformed ethereally into an imaginary sky scape over which two cubes are superimposed creating an out of body sensation.

It’s been a long silence.

For the last ten months, language and words have been silenced by an emotional minefield of ideas and beliefs.  The memory and loss of my mother drained all creative energy and I was unable to function in familiar patterns….as if the marrow had been sucked out of me.

With time, painful personal introspection ventured to look out and focus on an old sobering reality which needed to be addressed.  It felt impossible to disregard the effects of societal disrespect for our universe….but how to do that in the most painterly way?

Recently, each time I boarded a plane to visit family or friends, I had a sense that this was a mixed blessing…..the guilt of flying seesawing with the anticipation of happy reunions ahead.

In a way, sensing that this might be the last voyage, I felt that each flight had to be memorialised by taking photographs of that experience, whether of nature or of man made structures which harnessed that world. 

It feels prescient, now in Corona lockdown, to have a bank of images that remind me of another time and place. Using these as source material, surprising works have emerged which for me speak of love, nostalgia and perhaps spiritual belief systems. The figure hovers but is not always manifest. This artist’s voyeur gaze is pointed to the viewer and I’m curious at the endless possibilities of the journey.