Remembering Air

For several years I've been painting skies, celebrating their glories, as viewed from the shores of the small island where I live.

This past autumn I felt ready for a change, a shift in focus, and I began listening to the wind. Following an urge I've had for some time to make paintings that are almost entirely white, I responded to the sounds of gusting breezes in the trees, the calls of crows and eagles, cricket song, with lots of white paint applied in many quick gestural strokes. Images appeared and disappeared. Colour remained muted, with white predominating. Each brush stroke is like a character, part of a text that becomes woven in layers of complexity.

In these paintings I'm considering air as a substance, something we live and move in, something that supports us, uplifts us, fills our lungs. Sensations of buoyancy, lightness and spaciousness are evoked.

Air is also a medium of communication. The sky, apparently empty, is actually filled with waves (or is it particles?) of various frequencies. Information is being constantly transmitted through the space around us. I've used a sort of intuitive scribbling to express this sense of connectivity, and energized space.

Speaking of energized space, by late autumn the lilting northwest breezes gave way to much fiercer winds from the southeast. I became witness to winds of immense and frightening power, building in sound and intensity, flinging big branches through the air, uprooting full grown fir and arbutus trees. The question then became: can I remain calm in the midst of this maelstrom?

The questioning continues, and I'm still inspired by the forces that move through the air.