This Anxious State:
Anxiety, State, Society
Silent Scream 2020
60 X 72 cm
oil on canvas
The text in the painting is an excerpt from the South African Constitution.
Like many country’s Constitutions around the world, International Laws and Treaties
are the frames of reference providing stability for humanity which are profound and
beautiful.
The cutting mat in the background and the screaming mouth illustrate the angst when an agreed international contracts are not fulfilled, or selectively cut and
disrespected.
Screaming at the void- it is the gap and the breach of trust – between what is promised and what is delivered.
Inflation (noun): The action of inflating something or the condition of being inflated.
Economics- a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.
In physics and astronomy, inflation refers to the theory of an extremely rapid, exponential expansion of the universe that occurred in the first fraction of a second after Big Bang.
Yemen 2015
72 X 60 cm
oil on canvas
The Kitchen continues on this journey of Space-Time but brings these grand themes closer to home, into my kitchen be exact.
In the painting “The Kitchen”(2024) there is an explosion on the splash-back of the kitchen wall. This interior portrait scene portrays the idea that we experience consciously and /or unconsciously threats to human civilisation in all the spaces we inhabit.
The Kitchen is a symbol of human civilisation in that culture progresses alongside the gastronomical practices of cultures all around the world. In “The Kitchen” I also portray a “jack-in-the-box”: illustrative of difficult and surprising events which always inject their disruptive contents in unpredictable, sometimes capricious ways.
See other details in “The kitchen”: drugs (lines on tray), Homo Naledi, Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century”, self-referential paintings on wall (neo-liberalism, geopolitics. Etc,), Star of David on kitchen towel and 7.10 (7th October 2023) on oven display.