Notes from an easel-part 79-Ghost

The latest piece has felt like a revelation for me-it's almost a sister piece to the merging skull compositions I've been working on-Trinity, Life After Death and Disambiguous foresight with the exception that it feels like I made some sort of evolution in my painting.

Apart from when I've included the skulls in a figurative environment, the background element has always felt detached, like an object oscillating in a none space-its relationship has only been measured by color or what I would call a theatrical backdrop to instill an ominous grandeur that isn't there.

With this piece, I feel I've bridged that gap-making it seem like the space around the skull has fossilized and somehow biomorphically suffused with bone. Hard space if you will.



I was also trying to introduce a spiritual element as a counterpoint to the cold hollow skull motif, working on the notion that the cavities and shadows harbor echoes of thoughts past, almost in the same way phantasms haunt an old room following some emotionally traumatic event.

As a result, I've entitled it 'Ghost', I'm delighted with the result, and shall develop the piece to larger scale as a part of this particular group.



Here's that wonderful abstract piece of avant garde also called 'Ghosts' by David Sylvian from the early 80's. Hard to believe that anything so odd could ever be in the charts, but it was a different and better time then.