The Guardian & The Return

These two small paintings have a big story behind them, a least a long one.

As you may know, I often paint without knowing what it is I am doing. That is I know how to paint, but the subject matter, the theme or the reason why I am making a particular work is not always clear, often until the work is finished and some times not even then. This is not rare for artists, in fact it might be a sign that real serious art is being made. What is rare is that the artist admits it; there is a sort of fear of being a fraud or a taboo around this kind of not knowing.

I have come to not only accept this way of working, but embrace it and use it as a method. The exploration of the Unconscious has become an ongoing theme in my process and has proven in the past to add enormously to the result. This is because art, for me, is an exploration and a conversation with the work. I relinquish control, sometimes removing myself as the critic and let the work make itself so to speak. I admit that I am the author but there is also a sense of being guided.

These two paintings embody this process in extraordinary ways. They emerged at the same time and embody a series of coincidences that have surprised even me, even though I got used to this sort of thing. The sketch was chosen from an old sketchbook, made long before I lived here, one I have never worked up into a painting before; a blindfolded figure before a spiral hill. The first surprise was, while working on “The Return” as it came to be called, that I visit this hill almost daily for my stroll. Behind my house is a small park with a spiral path winding up a hill to a look out point at the very top. It took me a few weeks, while working on this piece, to suddenly realise that I was painting this very same hill. While painting I noticed that I had put doorways in the painting of the hill, as if it was hollow. Only later I found out, while talking to an old man who also frequents this place, that it is indeed hollow. It was originally a large dune used as a war time hospital by the Germans, now covered and turned into a park. The figure that I was painting suddenly seemed to be unbandaging herself as if emerging from this one time hospital…

During this period I felt a strong need to return to my study of the tarot, as new facts were emerging that needed consideration. This led me back to the work of Dante Alighieri and his “La Divine Commedia”. While decoding this deeply esoteric work I found myself reading about his description of purgatory - a metaphysical hill found in the afterlife that the souls of the dead must climb before entering the garden of paradise. Here again was my hill wound around with a spiral path leading to a sacred garden atop. It became increasingly clear that this was the theme behind these paintings. I say paintings because I was not quite happy with the first one; it needed doing again only this time subtlety different. This time the figure was holding up her hand as if guarding the way. She holds a staff with a crow head a-fixed. I had no idea why. Crows are a thing at the moment.

My research into Dante led me to another hill almost identical to the one described in La Commedia. This time in an illustration in an old alchemical manuscript comparing the path of the alchemist to a path up a mountain. This visual metaphor for the journey of the alchemist to reach perfection or the philosophers stone as it was known, was identical to both my painting and the description in La Commedia. The spiral path, a figure in the foreground blindfolded, a sacred garden atop. Two metaphors, one meaning - the perfection of the soul.

Eventually the paintings were finished, the parts I was unsure of became easy to fill in. With Dante’s help I realised that this hill was depicting the path to perfection, a path through the underworld, a path of purification. There are two paintings because there are two journeys; one ascending, one descending, one of rebirth into the world and one of entering into death or the darker realms of the unconscious. The crow head became clear, as it is used as a symbol for the nigredo - the phase in alchemy of death and disintegration. Her hand is held high as if in warning, as she is the guardian of this threshold. The other painting I realised, describes the return journey from the Underworld, as she is unbinding her swathings, removing her blindfold, emerging from her ordeal, slightly smiling. This is why this work is called “The Return”.