Blue Lotus

In this painting I wanted to place the whole idea of taking flight within one body, so that not only the external tools of flying like feathers, but also the infinite space of the sky, was within the form, self sufficient and self contained.

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

The last and largest piece completed for Blue Lotus, this painting is all about creation and downfall. It is meant to be read anti-clockwise from the eggs in the hand at the bottom of the composition, through self-realisation/corruption, deification and ego, before finishing with the tarot figures being taken to the next world by the dolphins.
Tangata manu (Bird-man) is the winner of a traditional competition by the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), where competitors would swim out to a nearby island to retrieve the first sooty tern’s eggs of the season. The winner was the first one back with the eggs in tact, who would be crowned bird-man. The figure in the painting is my version of the cult’s deity, Make-Make. In its hand is held a nest of eggs and a chick, a copy of a wood and ivory sculpture which was found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

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.

Oil and ink on paper mounted on board and framed.

Large scale painting of oil and ink on paper mounted on to board and framed.

From a life drawing at Vaulty Towers, a small room below the pub, where the model is always close, resulting in great angles and foreshortening. The bisection which divides the picture was either a rug or the skirting board, and I used it in this early painting as a first exploration into the duality between the conscious and the unconscious mind which reoccurs in subsequent Blue Lotus pictures.