I Walk Beside You

Powerful words from an equally powerful song by one of my favoutie bands, Dream Theater.

Taken from their 2005 album Octavarium, it’s a commentary on the bonds that we share between the people we care most about. The things that we seldom ever say but the feelings we can all experience. To those that matter it says ‘I will be there’. That there is no question about walking the life journey together and that there’s no condition to the love that is given. Whether it be your children, your partner or someone else it’s a song that encompasses the very best things about us as a species.

I would heartily suggest you give the track a listen: ‘I Walk Beside You’ by Dream Theater So, having established the meaning behind the art let’s look at the painting itself and see if I can link everything together for you.

The choice of colour is perhaps the most crucial component; I can’t imagine this working in blue and green… The red and pink background layer is warm and womb-like (don’t email to complain, it’s just a concept!), the colours over the top are tempered with coolness yet also have their moments of crazy. There are dark and light bits, smooth and rough bits, sharp corners, U-turns, chaos, clarity, tangents, containment and waywardness. In fact you could pick out all the ways to describe life and I’ve probably got some kind of reference to it in there somewhere. I see much of the world in shapes and colours; a bit weird I know but that’s the emotive reaction I have to things. If only I had the time to paint how everything made me feel.

If you consider the whole life thing as being a series of twists and turns then it’s easy to see why I’ve chosen to represent this in a loop format. It’s up to you whether you see a beginning or an end; I prefer to see it as series of meanderings from one thing to another, with some smooth and some not so smooth things along the way. That for all the apparent constant of the days and the years nothing stays the same for very long. This is what I have tried to bring out in what appears to be a very constant and linear shape but is, in fact, a series of individual movements linked together; rather like the while life thing itself. One big collection of moments all strung together.

And yet it’s the power of our togetherness that binds us all. The thing that brings all the extremes into one wonderful experience. That no matter what lies around the corner or how much we sit back and look at what our lives have become, we can all feel like we belong, we can all fight for the things we value and we can all stand by the ones we love.