 EssaysTHE PYRAMID SERIES 1998 - 1999 A good friend and collector commissioned 8 paintings in May 1998. The original brief was very informal, he wanted a series that would attempt to carry over some of the ideas in " impossible physics " to the arena of the painted canvas. This chosen perspective and starting point was very broad, given that my approach in painting is not to illustrate from preconceived ideas, but to challenge the very process itself, I took the commission to see and explore this possible link as was desired by the commissioner. All eight paintings were begun simultaneously, the process being to work on all the surfaces as if to spread the initial impulses and ideas that were activated by the commission. The objective was not to illustrate the " architect " series into painting, but to paint with a sincere hope that there may be a crossover point between the two processes. Painting for me is an extensive process of reading color configurations, a process of looking at color to see how it aligns with and, or reflects form, color has the effect of being integral to form but also superficial, as would be a skein. The skin or surface of a painting is a plastic illusion that is constructed from the interplay of color and form relationships that lie beneath it. The author's attempt is to harmonize the variables of time, space, and the material itself, as if to search for new meaning and create a new illusion. With each surface I was conscious of the action of " building the ground " on which the final images would rest or emerge from, the resulting surface is very deliberately made up from, and out of this weaving and compilation of impulses that become translated and transformed via gestures in color, over a given period of time. The process is to create a very deliberate chaos, to deliberately introduce challenges on the surface in an attempt to push my own boundaries of meaning and visual understanding. Over a period of time this becomes a search through memory in an attempt to rediscover order within the rectangular space. Creating, preserving, and destroying forms, examining the tensions between opacity and transparency, building a sense of psychic meaning that is in its immediate counterpart as color on the surface. Working out the image on the canvas itself, answering in the immediate to a secret, silent, mind that dictates and criticizes the process. The paintings are constructed from layers of correction and editing, until the final image locks into the rectangular arena of the canvas. There is no predetermined outcome or desire, there is no notion of how the result should be, the concentration is in the process itself to try and uncover a new formal equation on each surface. The process is akin to a search, a pushing and probing with the actions and gestures of painting, a sublimation into color fields and densities, allowing myself into a mental and visual conversation, free from utterances, a meditation and mediation between mind and matter. The process is not unlike emptying the mind of coagulated memory, using color is the key to release or unlock specific brain functions, information passes from mind, through body, and into color via manipulations. Memory, my own internal history, is used to inform these gestures and manipulations, critical adjustments on the surface of the canvas attempt to give form to an interior dialogue. Working with these processes of thought, the pyramidal form began to emerge, no doubt carried over from an ongoing study over many years, but also directly from the experience with the drawings in the " architect of impossible physics ". The form as a triangle presents a kind of contradiction to the rectangle, its diagonal aspect implies another dynamic, yet in its three dimensional aspect the pyramid sits on a square platform, with 90 degree angles. I became interested in the placement of these factors within the rectangular format of the works, allowing myself to be guided by a sense of my own geometric harmonies. The pyramid represents amongst other things, memory, because it functions as a device to catapult you back in time and forwards at the same time. It is an object that inspires actions of bodily worship, you are drawn into devotional gesture as you would on entering a temple, you crawl, kneel, lie down, and look up to the heavens, with every step taken in and around the pyramid. To enter the pyramid is to walk into a time machine of sorts, where, if you had the language of its intricate and sacred geometry, you could no doubt engage the form on a more meaningful level. From an aesthetic point of view, the pyramid is an awesome piece of design, an enduring cornerstone of myth, of seemingly superhuman and effortless construction, as if glued together by its own massive force and geodetic alignment. It transcends the definitions of aesthetics, curiosity introduces you to its physics and its cosmic alignments, fact becomes further fact, you end up in myth, non - sense, history, speculation, questions of terrestrial belief, and faith. The mathematics links a fixed object in gravity, to the night sky and beyond, to me it would appear that the pyramid is a kind of missing link between a present system of thought and a more ancient one with deliberate intent. I am in a process of enquiry, where the questions are made up as I go along. The action of making the work is an extension of this attitude to try and create new knowledge. It is a silent activity in between aspects of the everyday life and action, a place of reflections, gestures and affirmations, a place where mentality is turned into skill, a place where stories are invented and perpetuated, a kind of virtual space. All 8 paintings are identical in size, 4
feet high by 3 feet wide.
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