THE SECRET PLACE

THE SECRET PLACE

Transcendent, Immutable, Sublime. Places of rare beauty, of transient effect that catalyse an escape from the corporeal world. Of ocean or desert or forest or mountain, the Sublime is not the domain of any one place, of absolute criteria or local bounds; the secret place lies within. It is a sanctuary to which we take flight, an understanding beyond the horizon. The assembled suite of paintings is a result of my own attempts to find that vaporous something, that quiet, that Beauty; a subliminal moment where the corporeal and the celestial converge. Representing an idea, the place is not so important as the moment – certainly, the vast wilderness that so easily evokes the unknowable for me is not the sole subject of the works. Small moments from my local environment can make just as vigorous an impression. Though the corporeal provides deep foundations, not all the works are literal depictions of my travels, but are perceptions induced by a certain location, the feel of the moment rather than the form through time. A moment of pause can be found within the light on a meadow, just as it can be established bathing in the unassailable magnificence of the Heysen Range. Different experiences, unquestionably, but memorable nonetheless. Indeed, it is an intensity of memory that has resulted in these paintings. Only a moment of potency can provide sufficient cause to result in an attempt to capture that moment.  These are images that have impressed upon my memory – reconstructions of the unobtainable, the Sublime one so craves. What is glorious to one may be ignoble to another, so the individual, the viewer, must inevitably find their own way to their secret place – All I do here is provide echoes of mine.