Headz Series

A selection of Heads that I painted between the years 2014 and 2021 using acrylic on canvas and gouache on paper. On the predominance of the colour red, “Red is equated with the heart, flesh and emotion, compared to its fellow primaries, blue (spirit) and yellow (mind)... According to the poet Yeats, ‘Red is the colour of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times.”... Goethe remarked of red that ’it is not to be wondered at that impetuous, robust, uneducated men should be especially pleased with this colour.” “Red (according to Dr. Max Luscher) is an impulsive colour, attractive to people who value things that offer intensity of living and fullness of experience.” On the colour blue: “Vast expanses of sky and ocean accommodate the spirit craving release through a sense of infinity; their loftiness and depth have endowed their colour with a noble character... Blue has a seamy side. ‘Blue Gown’ was an expression for a harlot.. blue movies (which escape the censor’s blue pencil) and blue humour are indecent. Blue Monday, the one before Lent, is so called due to the presumed alcoholic excesses preceding Lenten austerity.” - Colour by Helen Varley Dozens of heads in profile. Although rather humorous in tone, this series of Headz has a secretly pscychedelic and even absurdly mystical undercurrent. The multifold Universe of Spirituality is a seam that runs through the works unnoticed and rather out of place. Among the awkward profiles with a flat affect or a slightly angsty look you’ll find many eyed gods, vessels of animism, strange spirits inhabiting negative spaces, in shadows and hovering above the sky, evil eyes, hypnotic and mesmeric eyes, transcendental vibrations, psychedelia, ancient Janus heads, fountains of life, the Astral Plane, Theosophical Thought Forms, tenuous references to Ancient Egypt, Buddhism and Iconographic art. The fixed and immovable facial expression of Transcended Beings, betrayed only by the odd liquid tear. No smile, no lips, no nostrils flaring, no chunky ears, nose hair, hardly any lashes nor eyebrows. The flatness of an existence above or outside of dimensions, in blues and reds. Watching us watching them.