My batik painting “What Once Was Twice” received First Place in Painting at The Murray Art Guild’s show “Visual Evidence”. It was a real thrill to get this recognition for a piece that really means a lot to me. And to cap it off, the piece sold soon afterwards!
The imagery here extends my interest in the jacaranda seed pod, used in a front/back orientation representing the illusion of duality. As a philisophical stance, “non-dualism” has a history in eastern religion. Variously described as “the coincidence of opposites” or “the dialectic” in western circles, the concept describes the paradoxical nature or all experience. What seems to exist as duality (mind/spirit, heaven/earth, male/female) is considered to be largely an illusion of the intellect. The unresolvable tension between monism and dualism is redirected in the paradoxical expression: “non-dual”.
The seed pod images are further explored as lens through which we view a landscape. The landscape here is from an image of a national park in Iceland called Pinvellir. The geology of that area is volcanic and the igneous rock is covered in multicolored lichen and heather. The effect is entirely enchanting and I had a kind of extraordinary experience walking the valley there. I later described the landscape as “otherwise inhabited” (if that gives you some idea of the impact it had on me).
So in this image the two becomes a lens through which we attempt to view a mystical one.
