Issue #1, July 2013

welcome to the first issue of my "New Work" newsletter. This year I have been producing a lot of work, mainly paintings, drawings and collages around the theme of Plant Life. It's been very absorbing, needing lots of thought and research which has resulted in less actual painting lately but in a good cause. 

One thing that stands out is that whichever medium I'm using at the time has a strong effect on the outcome, more than I would have expected. I suppose it's because each medium elicits its own physical and intuitive response and lends itself to different thought processes. But still, a remarkable phenomenon.

The idea behind the Plant Life series is that the world of plants is closed to us, just as the world of animals is closed to us because we can't communicate with them (cf John Berger,  Why Look at Animals). It's a world steeped in mystery, dimly seen, partly out of sight underground, and I'm exploring it through drawing, painting, printmaking and collage, each medium with its particular abilities to reveal or conceal. 

One of the things I found was Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants, which was re-published not long ago in a beautiful new edition, a small hardcover illustrated with photographs and line drawings including some of Goethe's own drawings. He was forever curious and striving to make sense of the natural world, an artist-scientist in the style of Leonardo. This is one of several lines of inquiry.

All of which has resulted in a varied and eclectic body of work which is just in its beginning stages. 
 

Some of the work 

Milton Avery and Alex Katz may have influenced the paintings below (I leave it to the reader to decide in what way), while the collages are based on wildflower drawings from a series I did back in the 80s.

(The image in the header is a detail of a monoprint. If you don't see this image or those below, click "Display images" at the top of the email.)

1. Anthuriums, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9". View at Saatchi Online
2. Blue Flowers, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8". View at Saatchi Online 
3. Croton, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8". View at Saatchi Online 
4. Red Impatiens, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8". View at Saatchi Online