This is my latest completed oil painting based on photos found on flickr of the Clootie well up on the Black Isle in Scotland. If you’re interested in seeing this painting’s progression I recently shared the photos of it’s early life in this post here.
And as I was devising my artist’s statement the other day, I thought I’d share the official description of what my most recent paintings have been about…
My work explores people, animals and places that lead the viewer towards a mystical unknown. My subject matter is inspired by rituals, superstitions and religious folklore, originally popularised by devotional art and stories passed down the generations. These tales, though evolved from their origins, take new forms and are retold through contemporary mediums on the internet. Through searching the masses of files uploaded onto sites such as YouTube and Flickr one can still see these glimpses of mystical themes excitedly shared between members. It’s the persistent way that these themes still continue to resurface, despite our common desire in the West to free ourselves from superstition, that I find interesting. I paint the need and desire to perpetuate these beliefs and practices, appropriating places and ideas, found, from other people’s images and stills that were shared and uploaded into the etha. My work is not loaded with obvious metaphors but I aim to explore an ambiguous beauty that draws the viewer into a retreat from the absolutes of life.