Symbiosis
Symbiosis
This painting travelled from the UK to Australia as a cupboard door with canvas stretched through routed out sections of it. The blue sky framework was there, colours on some of the folded canvas were there, but I could never work out what else to do. One day in my studio, door open to the elements, the sunlight and clear sky made me paint colour and intensity. The dark edges of the centre section had to be darker and the folds of canvas had to be lighter. The dark asked for texture. Finally I did my thing of focussing on the very core message of so much of life. There is both light and dark, often perceived as good and bad. We use the words as description of negative and positive. This painting challenges those ideas. Here, dark, light and all colours containing both work together and are utterly necessary to each other. This painting captures what is simply true; we don’t know dark or light without its contrast of light or dark. If we take out the negative perceptions, we can find good in both dark and light, find despair in both light and dark. Each just are. Symbiotically, they all need each other to be seen.