MAJESTY AND ORDER

Majesty and Oder Oil on linen 36 x 36 cm 2009

While I was painting this image above I was thinking about 'order'...and not house tidy type of order [although I know my family thinks I should think about this more!]. I was thinking about 'order' as in destiny and fate or another name could be 'divine order'. Coupled with my thoughts about 'order' were ponderings on systems, all kinds of systems from natural ones to man-made ones. The largest system is the one which gives pulse to the Universe and whilst we may not conpletely understand this system we know it exists. Now this got me thinking...if we have evidence of a system it does not mean we know how it works, yet we have faith that it does.

Sometimes, a system is not evident until something happens which gives rise to questions about how, why and when the event happened. Sometimes people achieve things without an apparent system, yet once the achievement is made a 'walk' back through the experience will reveal a 'system', which may or may not demonstrate traditional lock step sequential patterning.

For sequential thinkers a system is possibly a different thing to a divergent thinking person. This latter type person will not necessarily think sequentially as in 1,2,3. Their sequence may be 3, 1, 2. This person is often a BIG picture thinker, who will demonstrate hyperactivity and boredom if confronted initially with sequential 'bits' without a BIG picture promise. I think primary school is a devastating place for tangential BIG picture thinking children, because there is so much emphasis on 'bits' of information. These children wonder why they need to learn the 'bits' and tune out when there seems to be no or little relevance...I have seen this with my own children.

So, these are some of the thoughts I had when I was painting this new image. I have just finished it and my thoughts are still spilling over... as they do...which is a kind of system isn't it? Indeed, I have faith that this will happen after finishing a painting, thus leading to the inspiration for my next painting.

I wanted to paint an image which 'spoke' of systems, faith and majesty. My tree-of-life motif represents all of life, but I have formed it to appear like the Earth in orbit. In this sense, the painting is a landscape, indeed a vast one. The size of the painting is small ie: 36 cm x 36 cm, but I like the way vastness still exudes with majesty. It fits in with my ideas about distance being close and/or far. Readers of my BLOG would know of my fascination with the permeability of distance and perspective. The tree-of-life and its branches suggest a system, a natural one akin to those of river systems, mountain ranges, cloud patterns, ants trails, vine tendrals, blood vessels, lymph systems, finger prints and the markings on the palms of your hands....and so on. Each dot represents another world of systems pulsing with life and having faith that it will continue.

I have painted the dots amongst the tree-of-life branches in various pale shades of the complementary colour of the surrounding branches. So, the purple branches have pale yellow dots, the red/pink branches have pale green dots and so on. I did this deliberately for a few reasons: 1. The colour wheel provides a system which artists can use to augment the visual impact of their work 2. I like the concept of seemingly oppositional forces creating a tension which can stimulate 'happenings' 3. I like how seeming randomness, as in the placement of the dots, can be questioned by the subtlety of complementary associations...and how this gives clues to 'hidden' systems at work in our lives and psyche [both idividually and collectively].

Anyway, I could go on and on! But, I won't because maybe you have your own thoughts and as I have said before I love viewers taking my work to places I have not thought of. I do not complete my work, because each conversation either within a person or with others, provides another completion, thus the possibility of multiple completions. Now, is that a system? Systems are everywhere. There is an 'order' in their very existence giving majesty and awe to our lives.