Questions

As is always the case : ), I have experienced such bliss with the process of engaging with this work, with the paint, with a new painters medium and the client is happy with the work. And it has a quality that I enjoy. And then, after a week end of engaging with performance artists and academics, my ego steps in...

Now I want to know, why am I painting these plants? Now I wonder again, why is it that I am choosing to explore this side of life - plants and not people? Have I been refusing to really engage in society and in community?






Protea grandiceps [Entrance] 850x850mm - oil on canvass

I have tried to express my fear, my darkness in some of these works, but again and again, I am brought back to the process of growth that happens silently while we are living our fast paced lives, to this feeling that there is a structure hidden here in the seeming chaos - it is a feeling that makes me want to laugh at just how seriously we tend to take ourselves. It is as if these plants are in a surrender that allows life to simply happen through them, there is a trust in the intelligence of their cells to create the plant they will become.