Notes on upcoming show

Over forty works covering two floors of the Gallery at Manor Mill, the show “Phases of Mind”, represents two ways I explore feelings I’m trying to understand reflecting diverse mental states. The pastel drawings on the second floor investigate idea-based moods often triggered by my reading in science and philosophy. I think of these drawings as visual philosophy, an image that shows a set of relationships that can prompt ideas in the viewer. One purpose is to break down fixation on separate objects and shift attention to processes of change and interpenetration, drawing attention to impermanence. The graphite-based drawings on the third floor focus on weight, how it affects attention and conveys seriousness. These are darker moods as the metaphor of heaviness implies. Many of them are also motivated by the desire to have the image push out at the viewer rather than the traditional sense of the picture falling back from a window. The seven drawings in the “Rational Limits” series, six of which were shown at the BMA are a bridge to the socio-political work that formed the rest of that show. They consider the mindsets that detach people from their feelings enough to create division and anxiety in the world. In all off these works, the viewer can go in many directions of their own. I’ve sought an essence that gives form that can prompt a viewers’ thought.