I honestly can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t drawn to metaphysics. As a child I can remember private conversations with my ‘secret doctor’, particularly during difficult family times. I would retreat to my hideout under the attic stairs and listen to (what I now know as) my inner voice. Now, as then, I’m gently guided to new ideas and methods for shaping my world. And much later I would understand that his process is essential for making art.
The series of Unseen Architecture paintings is an unending attempt to explore metaphysical principles through art. After decades of trying to reduce the multiple interwoven forces of time space which shape our layers of reality into a picture ….. really … A PICTURE …. well, it’s puzzling why I keep trying … tilting at windmills.
Mysteriously, I do keep trying. Symbols of all kinds are incredibly content-rich bundles. Always building blocks of art, symbols hold worlds of meaning, now as much as ever. Emojis are especially powerful — a contemporary visual vocabulary which remains ever-relevant by moving at the speed at technology. Moreover, they are happy and accessible — exceedingly useful in communicating unfathomable concepts.
This little painting is another noisy metaphysical piece, using the only approach that feels right for our times — NOISY! Plato’s Garden represents the Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. The ‘forms’ in my version are Murakami’s smiling flowers; the ‘shadows’ float deeper inside the cave, floral but unformed. In Plato’s Garden the shadow flowers are drawn to the light outside the cave, like living plants to sunlight. Forever hopeful, my shadow flowers move into the light, clustering among the forms, and blooming in higher layers.
