COLOURS IN BLACK
This series was made at a time in my life when I was grieving for a number of losses, and I was searching for colours in black.
It was also inspired by a trip to Tasmania where we lived on the beautiful huon pine boat of our friend Bruce.
The wild pure beauty of Nature touched me and the spirits of the lost traditional owners of this island at the end of the world.
Back in the studio I found photo of people from the Omo River in Ethiopia who decorate themselves with nature, their own bodies becoming works of art. Memories of my many trips to Africa and the sophistication of these tribal cultures came back to me.
When we travel around the world and meet other cultures, we learn that there are other options, other possibilities, other ways of thinking and interacting with the earth. The social world that we know doesn’t exist in some absolute sense, but rather is simply one model of reality, the consequence of one set of intellectual and spiritual choices that our particular lineage made many generations ago. The myriad of cultures of the world are unique expressions of imagination and heart, unique answers to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive?
When asked this question, these cultures respond in 7000 different voices.
The sum of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and beliefs, ideas and inspirations, brought into being by the human consciousness is the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all we are and have created.
The world can only appear monochromatic for those who interpret it from their own single culture. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit.
