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“Islands of compression in a sea of tension” is a description of how a tensegrity structure is balanced and held together. It equally describes the brief moments of stillness whilst at sea amidst a continuous state of movement and flux. The “eye” before the storm or “finding one’s land legs” when stepping onto terra firma, both express the flourish of sailing and the contrast of land’s stillness. A less obvious moment of stillness also occurs during sleep at sea, when one returns to the steady land of loved ones or home-life far away: only to wake up to the too-ing and fro-ing of motive journeys’ gently rocking one forward in compressive-tension. These island like moments can also be found physically in the rituals of the day at sea, the rum toddy, crossing the equator, telling stories, singing shanties, maintaining ship, embarkation and disembarkation, spotting land, spotting driftwood, fishing, being on deck, spotting dolphins and charting stars. These mental “islands” at sea can also be found in the knowledge of one’s location in terms of maps, Eastings, radio communications, compass, astrolabe, star chart, speed of knots, sea depth the tolling of the hourly bell, evening sunset and morning sunrise.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£200
The vitality of water offers frequent associations with energy and life. The fresh air soothes the senses and creates an immersive sense of being enveloped by fresh, linen-like softness. The waves add to this atmospheric humour of expansiveness, that only the horizon seems to secure the eye. The clouds are another element in this liquid and ozone vitality that moves, grows, and in flux arrange themselves as backdrops for the sea bound. The journey here is not one of distance but nuances of gentle inner healing.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£600
The Russian philosopher Gurdjieff believed that the air had different nutrients that fed the mind. Apparently the mind is given increased capacity of thinking and experiencing when exposed to nutritious elements in the air. At open seas, you only have the sky above and fresh air all around you. You are immersed in the sky and air above the plane of the sea. At one with the atmosphere, not touching ground – is experienced as a floating sensation; not simply on the waves, but being raised above and into air, as if in flight amongst the ozone. Air is nutritious and a day at sea fills one’s mind with cleansing oxygen and undetermined psychic nutrients to wash away smoggy thought and meaningless worries. Ironically to go outside of one-self and to venture into these fresh air-elements - simultaneously allowing oneself to venture gently and deeply internally. To exhale is to then inhale (physically and mentally)- to become one with the clouds and air outside physically and around oneself - ironically brings one inside oneself mentally…
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£300
‘As a traveller in a foreign city, I would often wander free of notions of location and lose any sense of where I was headed, or where I was. However, along these walks there were always landmarks; “touch stones”, markers or special buildings that would remain fixed as sentinels in the mind- to pass-by or return-to. Along with the sun, these beacons would secure the journey and act as subconscious parameters, markers and “rules for the game” of my wandering. On many seas the sailor will sometimes have to similarly note, or more often imagine and even have to make up markers to fill the empty space of mind and seascape. At sea, the brief markers are far more mutable, less fixed, very subtle and often simply guessed at and intuited. For example, the Polynesians would note the gentle shifts in wave formations. As they progressed from island to island, they used a stick model, which approximated to a wave “stencil” whose outlines would be held against the backdrop of the seas to gauge its varying surface formations. For the traveller at sea – nothing is too small to read meaning into.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£300
The expanse of the sea, with panoramic horizon and unknown depths is both full of imaginary sea creatures below and emptiness above. As such it is a great metaphor for the subconscious, with an unknown, unseen, submerged space below, teaming with life: an empty surface rippled and wavy above, blown by a numinous atmosphere of sky and heavens. We in life, float on such a thin surface-reality between these states, occasionally raised like the breeze or winds above the surface and sometimes dipping into the unknowable chasms below. If we explore our oceanic mind, then maybe we will recognise the quantum differences of life below and above the surface. Only then might we relish and realise the beauty of this thin film of normality we call civilisation and the simple beauties of the natural Earth.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£300
The sea travellers’ superstitions are often formed as a way to find order in the chaos of the void. But luckily chaos never lasts too long and imagination soon brings order, if not guidance of some extraordinary, subconscious sort, to the empty fullness of the ocean’s mind. How else could one construe of the various menageries of the astrological creatures used to depict and fix dispersed stars in the empty night skies or to create such mythic creatures and stories of the seas? To name it, is to contain it. To give the emptiness life is to fill the empty ocean’s flat and dumb blankness. For some, boredom can act as a tonic. At sea however, it grows emotive, and creatures, fables and mermaids emerge from the subconscious. But sense prevails and the sirens’ calls are not heeded and recognisably not good. The folklore of the oceans act as a protection- as does the symbolism of mapping and the measures of navigation.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£200
Coming home to Dorset to live anew, from London was a homecoming – back to sea and sand, The Purbecks, family and good folk. But the journey never seems to have stopped and is actually an on-going return. This seems to be a revisiting of the familiar- yet the same place upon return is also a different environment and seems like a renewed set of different mental, social, emotional and familial horizons. Home, upon return is actually a new place. One of the best journey’s to be had is in returning home. Upon returning home you realise that the journey never ends and “home” is a place constantly sought after and like window shopping best appreciated by not attaining the desired experience simply physically, as in returning simply to the same “house”. “Home” is a horizon to work towards and like contentment itself requires oblique markers to guide one forward..
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£400
Waves are flying waters. A wave is water “flying”. Flying water is a wave. Calm seas like the mind offer a sense of being aware of the moment, a balmy queitude. Not distracted by the waves. But simply and gently going. A still sea, however, beckons a storm. The gentler waves need to be dealt with and as such act as focus; whereby the gradual and sustainable “walking” offers a balance of doing and being. The seas surface like the mind will beckon what isn’t present, or will fearfully focus and worry on what is yet to come. It is rarely still. The mind like the sea calls for calm when rough and pushes for more adventure when calm. The mind will always, like a ship, strive and sail for what isn’t seemingly there. To find the next horizon, experience the next weather and to push and sail on, through the full range of potentials.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£300
The oceans like the deserts of the Australian outback offer momentary signs of life, flotsam, and star alignments and passing travellers. As such they reveal opportunities to create stories like maps of the “Dreamtime”. A subconscious spatial-map. These stories were told as songs by the Aboriginals – which included in the lyrics such passing signs that were gathered into the song/story to guide future travellers. Maybe more importantly, the travellers themselves when they met would exchange songs about from where they came and the other was going. This exchange of songs acted as an exchange of maps. In order to make some sense of the chaos that mind brings to emptiness; these lyrical creations had rhythm, objects and timing. First the explorers of the seas experience the emptiness of a flat landscape void of signs, then these ocean minds create signs to fill this vast void, then the chaos of finding new subconscious meanings in such signs requires further assimilation and finally some resolution and resolve is found over centuries in the mythical story that emerges, alchemically from the void.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£200
An ocean’s face is our response to our own self. It may be beautiful or dangerous or many more things in its many states. But we cannot help desire to contain, to name, to fix and to grasp it, as befits our spirits/or state of mind. It is due to its emptiness the ocean offers itself to us to be projected onto. The sea’s lack of readable markers, call on us to fill its emptiness. Its dumbness beckons our imaginations and hopes and fears for what’s over the horizon or possibly below the surface, because whatever withdraws from us draws us and ultimately call us towards itself. A sort of recessed space pulls one along.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£200
The expanse of the sea, with panoramic horizon and unknown depths is both full of imaginary sea creatures below and emptiness above. As such it is a great metaphor for the subconscious, with an unknown, unseen, submerged space below, teaming with life: an empty surface rippled and wavy above, blown by a numinous atmosphere of sky and heavens. We in life, float on such a thin surface-reality between these states, occasionally raised like the breeze or winds above the surface and sometimes dipping into the unknowable chasms below. If we explore our oceanic mind, then maybe we will recognise the quantum differences of life below and above the surface. Only then might we relish and realise the beauty of this thin film of normality we call civilisation and the simple beauties of the natural Earth.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£300
The ancient monks of The British Isles, on their spiritual journeys, would venture forth across the Atlantic far from any notions of Home, guided by God and stars. The Vikings would be enlightened and heightened by Fly Algaric mushrooms and thus would be guided by their Gods across the oceans too. The Polynesians used their Gods also, to guide them intuitively across the seas between the continents. The vastness and void of the seas had to be filled with some great entity, as man cannot deal with such emptiness alone. Yet, this very emptiness can be seen to have deep mental substance- as the Orientals recognised. According to the philosophy of ‘The Golden Flower’- only in upmost emptiness, can God truly be felt. Here there are no distractions. Here, the total immersion in Nothingness, is a holistic engagement of all senses, and not the usual mental chatter of city life on land and as such is a release that allows us to reconnect to the Numinous beings we truly are and constantly search for.
Signed oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas
£200