Category Archives: Figure Painting

Passing: Fire Escape (Detail of Work in Progress)

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Yet another detail (see last two posts), showing a bit more this time. Not finished yet.

This painting began with the idea of red flames, figures descending stairwells and climbing escape ladders while the earth’s treasure, all we cherish in this world, is vanishing, gone forever out the window. It is not so red anymore, but the fire and fear of red reach back to a painting I originally posted in February last year, Nereids Enter the Burning Forest.

Here is the statement I wrote recently for that painting:

This painting is about bravery in the face of insurmountable odds.  The two figures run into a burning forest carrying balls of water, balloons.  They do this rather than step back, look away, leave the job to others.  With their action they counter the hopelessness we on the sidelines feel in these times of crisis.  As I write this, the world mourns in anger the seemingly targeted deaths of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza.

RED

Red for me means love and joy
But that is not the subject here.

Fire and Fear

This red is a line and a light:
Don’t cross, it taunts;
Don’t move, it mocks.

This red threatens and cons.
Courage, it cries!
Promising passion,
It pleads sacrifice.

This red is infernal
Gathering heat as it roils and rolls,
It bleeds its case.
It wants your life.

Fire Escape (Details of Work in Progress)

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Acrylic, ink, pastel on canvas (2024)

Size: w 20″ x h 40″ x d 1.5″

This painting is taking hours and hours but it has gradually revealed itself in depth, texture, rich colour. Not quite finished, as yet.

Dreaming My Dissolution (Detail)

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Acrylic, Japanese paper, gold leaf on canvas (2020)

Size: w 28 x h 40 x d 1.75 inches

This piece is also known as Sea Change (Fall Rich and Strange) — June 2020 for the full image. That title still holds, but when I looked at the painting this morning the words came to me. The new title is dark, but perhaps letting out the dark allows the light to come in.

Setting

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Acrylic and graphite on paper mounted on cradled birch panel (2020)

Size: w 13″ x h 18″ x d 1.5″

Last night I was thinking about the poet Louise Bogan (subject of my PhD thesis a while back). She and her husband renovated an old farmhouse in New York state in 1929. She loved that house. A year and a half later they were driving home from visiting his mother and could see over the horizon that their house was burning. She lost all her manuscripts.

The painting above is about the sun setting. The poem below is about climate change — not about Bogan’s experience — but the image in my head of her house burning, seen through her eyes, was the spark for it.

Bereft

____

When I left, the world was green

There was birdsong

There was life.

____

Left/Nothing

____

I came home to find my house on fire

I was not gone long

I had not gone far.

____

I dream of scorched earth

Nereids in the Clouds (Detail)

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Acrylic, pastel, ink, Japanese paper on canvas (work in progress, 2022)

Size: w 30″ x h 15″ x d 1.5″

This painting began as a simple study of white clouds across a blue sky, with of course my two Nereid friends present leaping from one to the next. I decided it needed more colour, texture and complexity. The above detail is roughly 6″ x 4″, so I have a bit yet to do.