Blue Lotus

One of the earliest paintings in the exhibition, in the formative stages of development of the half-man half-reptile creature which occurs and is refined later on.

Painted with ink and oil over paper mounted on board.

Loosely inspired by imagery from a passage in Greek myth where an island of people is wiped out before they are repopulated in numbers after a plea to Zeus, with the transformation of ants as they fell from a tree.

The deceased figure’s physical being is going back to the earth. But will her spirit make it into heaven or be banished to the other world? And in any case, don’t they have more fun down there than those of us who live above ground?

This was the first painting in which I thought about trying to articulate the space that exists between the physical and the spiritual experience, resulting in the violet shapes coming from the organs and the spine. The colour is used through this collection of paintings to signpost the spiritual element, developing from this early form into the more recognisably figurative later on.

A mysterious and mystical plant revered and feared through the ages.

Large scale oil and ink painting.

The first painting with more than one figure allowed me to develop the idea of interplay between two figures along with the contrasts of light and dark in their various guises.