Place of Encounter

Being present to the moment to the truth of what is there and by giving it my whole attention, comes very close to prayer. It is an encounter with a deeper, hidden and eternal self.

Visual disorientation is necessary to encourage me to jettison my preconceptions about how my work should look.

Disruptive interventions -

changing view-points

using my ‘wrong’ hand

drawing upside down

not looking at the image

All help facilitate seeing into the appearance of things and responding afresh to what is really there.

Landscape can be a healing presence and a solace in spite of centuries of man’s exploitative and corrupt behaviour.

It holds within it the hope and promise of eventual redemption, healing and renewal.

I want to impose a meaning on the marks by naming them, because naming brings reassurance and the illusion of my control over them.

The drawing reflects back something of myself which is hidden but which the image in part encapsulates.

What is being shown to me? I encounter an unknown, a stranger whose presence I can neither fathom nor to which I can give a verbal shape. I look and look but the image often remains inscrutable even to me although I made it.

At this point language breaks down. I can either accept the image for what it is or reject it. If it does have a meaning I cannot decipher it.

But someone else may perceive it differently and bring to it a valid interpretation of their own.