Earthbound - Inland
The paintings, prints and drawings produced for this series depict imaginary landscapes that emanate from the form of a sleeping figure. The following paintings are all oil on canvas and measure approximately 1.7x1.4m.
The images contain two figures that inhabit separate states of being. The sleeping figure at the lowest edge of the paintings gives rise to the dreamt space in which an awakened, active figure is situated. This second figure is an artist, or magician, who describes or conjures up the landscape about him. Energy expands, or is gathered towards the activity he generates through drawing.
Situated in a dry, broken ravine, he is witness to the transmission of ‘inspiration’ in the form of a breaking drought, perhaps brought about by his own volatile research. He brings the rain through the rift between two giant earth states. Since the nature of his work questions the very substance of things, he turns the two heaving cliffs into clouds. The drawn marks on the artist’s sketch block echo both the form of lightening and the passage of water through the gorge.
The mass of spirit ground that is separated for this ‘unearthly transaction’ relates to the ghost cliffs of earlier work. In this sense, the use of geology and related organic landscape forms are analogical to the interior of the head. The rising chalky escarpments are like either side of the skull; the fluid passage of the creek is like thought, connecting to the higher realms of the sky.
The starting point for imagining the features of the space about the conjurer figure was an ancient dry inland seabed on the western edge of the Tanami Desert, where I visited in 2004. The sleeping figure at the bottom of these paintings references my detached memories of this place and its use as a model for subconscious yearning. The subconscious mind constructs a path through the arid interior of the head and exits at a point beyond the horizon, outside the picture.
The painted works came after a few small silverpoint drawings and a group of prints. The drawing to the left was made with the trace of pure silver onto a sheet of prepared paper. The printed images to the right were produced from numerous photopolymer plates printed in the intaglio method. The works measure approximately 30x20cm.
This painting, ‘Rift’ (1.7x1.4m), continued the themes explored above, but reduced the range of colours and visual references to relate more closely to the intaglio prints from which it developed. The landmass is a flattened illusion, floating free yet connected to the surface of the picture-plane.
The prints displayed below left were intended to have the appearance of a fossil within a stone or a cut-away section of the inside of the head.
Explore this theme
1. Introduction
2. Inland (You Are Here)
3. Landlocked
4. Grotto