World on Fire
The kitchen clock ticks. A butter knife on the counter, crumbs and a pot of jam.
Through a wide open window, birds have honest conversations with the day, while a floral quilt dries inside-out over two chairs.
By the back door, garden shoes and stack of old newspapers, waiting to go out.
When I first created this artwork, I named it Good Morning. I was inspired by the idyllic perfection of the landscape around me in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the variety of natural colours as the seasons change. I wrote a typical scene, slow living, easy natural days.
Now raging forest fires consume the landscapes on almost every continent. The vibrant lush colours of life, water, vegetation are changing to shades we cannot reconcile with our beautiful Earth.
I have since renamed this painting “World on Fire”, highlighing the wind turbine in the distance, the grazing sheep. The charred ground may be closer, the flames ever higher, but we can yet fight back, not in fear, but in defiance and defence of this planet Earth we call home.
This painting was made using a limited palette of three colours - blue, yellow and brown. I cut pieces of paper with scissors to create sharp edges in contrast to the painted areas. I wanted to lay the fields down flat in two-dimensions, to form a patchwork, my goal being to abstract the natural scene before me and to anticipate pattern.
This desire to create pattern and patchwork comes from my background in crochet, much of which is produced by creating individual squares and motifs, and stitching them together.
This love of heritage craft is further evidenced in the fragment of floral paper I added to the landscape, a reminder of the simple lives enjoyed inside county houses, and also traditions under threat by modernisation and its consequences.
The fence in the foreground suggests the cross of a tombstone. The wind turbine in the distance is made from the same paper, indicating our need to worship a new master. Small squares of newspaper have been snipped to create a flock of sheep, who graze in ignorance, as unaware of the growing danger around them as they are of the contents of the newspaper from which they are made.
The kitchen clock ticks. A butter knife on the counter, crumbs and a pot of jam.
Through a wide open window, birds have honest conversations with the day, while a floral quilt dries inside-out over two chairs.
By the back door, garden shoes and stack of old newspapers, waiting to go out.
When I first created this artwork, I named it Good Morning. I was inspired by the idyllic perfection of the landscape around me in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the variety of natural colours as the seasons change. I wrote a typical scene, slow living, easy natural days.
Now raging forest fires consume the landscapes on almost every continent. The vibrant lush colours of life, water, vegetation are changing to shades we cannot reconcile with our beautiful Earth.
I have since renamed this painting “World on Fire”, highlighing the wind turbine in the distance, the grazing sheep. The charred ground may be closer, the flames ever higher, but we can yet fight back, not in fear, but in defiance and defence of this planet Earth we call home.
This painting was made using a limited palette of three colours - blue, yellow and brown. I cut pieces of paper with scissors to create sharp edges in contrast to the painted areas. I wanted to lay the fields down flat in two-dimensions, to form a patchwork, my goal being to abstract the natural scene before me and to anticipate pattern.
This desire to create pattern and patchwork comes from my background in crochet, much of which is produced by creating individual squares and motifs, and stitching them together.
This love of heritage craft is further evidenced in the fragment of floral paper I added to the landscape, a reminder of the simple lives enjoyed inside county houses, and also traditions under threat by modernisation and its consequences.
The fence in the foreground suggests the cross of a tombstone. The wind turbine in the distance is made from the same paper, indicating our need to worship a new master. Small squares of newspaper have been snipped to create a flock of sheep, who graze in ignorance, as unaware of the growing danger around them as they are of the contents of the newspaper from which they are made.
The kitchen clock ticks. A butter knife on the counter, crumbs and a pot of jam.
Through a wide open window, birds have honest conversations with the day, while a floral quilt dries inside-out over two chairs.
By the back door, garden shoes and stack of old newspapers, waiting to go out.
When I first created this artwork, I named it Good Morning. I was inspired by the idyllic perfection of the landscape around me in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the variety of natural colours as the seasons change. I wrote a typical scene, slow living, easy natural days.
Now raging forest fires consume the landscapes on almost every continent. The vibrant lush colours of life, water, vegetation are changing to shades we cannot reconcile with our beautiful Earth.
I have since renamed this painting “World on Fire”, highlighing the wind turbine in the distance, the grazing sheep. The charred ground may be closer, the flames ever higher, but we can yet fight back, not in fear, but in defiance and defence of this planet Earth we call home.
This painting was made using a limited palette of three colours - blue, yellow and brown. I cut pieces of paper with scissors to create sharp edges in contrast to the painted areas. I wanted to lay the fields down flat in two-dimensions, to form a patchwork, my goal being to abstract the natural scene before me and to anticipate pattern.
This desire to create pattern and patchwork comes from my background in crochet, much of which is produced by creating individual squares and motifs, and stitching them together.
This love of heritage craft is further evidenced in the fragment of floral paper I added to the landscape, a reminder of the simple lives enjoyed inside county houses, and also traditions under threat by modernisation and its consequences.
The fence in the foreground suggests the cross of a tombstone. The wind turbine in the distance is made from the same paper, indicating our need to worship a new master. Small squares of newspaper have been snipped to create a flock of sheep, who graze in ignorance, as unaware of the growing danger around them as they are of the contents of the newspaper from which they are made.
World on Fire
Acrylic/Collage
“8 x 6” (20cm x 15cm) - excluding frame
Original Artwork - includes black bevelled frame, glazed with white mount, strung ready for hanging