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I started using plexiglass panels as a response to my fans who expressed that they were running out of wall space for my ‘wonderful art’. So To alleviate this I decided to paint on SINGLE panels of Plexiglass and have the work hang from the ceiling so that the work could be viewed from both sides. This was the format for my work – painting on single panels – for about 2 years,..then I realized that the overlapping of panels on top of another created a visual language that conveyed precisely my artistic concern which is: Change is constant; it is everywhere. Change is unavoidable. Change never ceases and is always evolving. Change is life absolute. Most important to me is that how one responds to these changes, the encroachments, the externalities; how one attempts at the negotiation of aspects; how one becomes adaptive to the continuous confrontations. It is this that I believe becomes one’s reality, one’s identity. As one strives to restore equanimity to one’s well being from the externalities that are beyond one’s control, it is one’s reactions, one’s asserts on these impingements that ultimately create one’s very personal mindscape. These are my concerns and I discovered that the transparent quality of the plexiglass availed to this discourse The transparentness allows for the reflection of the aesthetic elements from the top panel onto the bottom panel to be apparent becoming a significant part of the work. The reflection of elements are constantly changing. These reflected elements – the lines, the shapes, the masses of colour – of the top panel all exert power/ will onto the bottom panel.. In addition the top elements also go through changes constantly themselves. One minute they are sinewy, elongate, slenderized, then the next moment they become truncated and broaden. Because these elements from the top panel are irrevocably changing, how they affect the elements on the bottom panel are hence always changing.
For all this to be more evident, the viewer holds a light and slowly moves from one side of the work to another; then towards the work slowly; then away from the work. One can then see the multitude of changes that happens to the reflected elements of the top panel as they impose onto the bottom panel. This also demonstrates how the differing light exacts its influence and ‘makes’ the elements react to it. Consequently these varying lines, shadow, masses of colour impose upon the elements on the bottom panel – beyond the control of the bottom panel to escape or ignore. And so this symphony of change is always intermingling, interconnecting, meshing all around. It commands one’s reactions to the changes demanding that it is one’s principle life purpose.
My favourite plexiglass piece is Modernity. It encompasses colour and confusion on the bottom panel as the top panel holds 2 bold black stripes and a ball of fluorescent pink. These few elements on top become distorted and different depending on the light source as they exert their presence onto the elements of the bottom panel. To which I believe is reminiscent of how each of us must react, negotiate and adapt to the constellation of circumstance that impinge upon our lives. When one strives to restore equanimity to one’s being.
My favourite painting is Mind Mines. It recalls the painterly effects of Pollock and there exists many layers to the work. The fluorescent circular elements that are lyrically placed onto the dark harrowing mass of the canvas are the lightened areas of one’s existence that represent hope and comfort in a minefield of troubling times loaded with problems, self-doubt and uncertainty.