A simple circle, effortlessley executed and posing way more questions than it answers. This is an epic study in restraint and completeness.
110cm x 110cm (43″ x 43″)
This new contemporary black and white art work is an original painting created with just four colours – cream, white, black and gold.
On the outset it’s just a couple of circles for sure but let me explain why this painting is so much more than that. It is also one of the most extreme studies of light an dark I have ever created and says so much more about what isn’t there as much as offering a narrative on what is.
It’s a shape that is complete. A form that has no beginning or end and therefore is endless. It is a repeating shape and one that revisits all of its points infinitely. It is regular, linear and as perfect a natural shape as you can get.
I love the eternal mature of circles and the fact that they never end. They feature a lot in my work as it happens.
So in order to make something as simple as a circle as compelling and engaging as possible I did two things. I created an inner ring of gold and then chose to surround that with a series of dancing movements that are both spontaneous and chaotic as well as composed and regulated.
The outer circle is very much a contradiction of itself. A parody of two extremes if you will. It also represents the noise that so often envelopes the inner peace we all look for from time to time. It’s the business of things, the hustle and bustle and the frenzy that our worlds have become.
It’s therefore the space in the centre that becomes the most dramatic. Its void of emptiness is as deafening as it is silent. And there we have our two extremes of light and dark once more.
It is perfect.
By that I mean several things. Firstly the inner gold ring is perfect and I assure you that it was painted entirely by eye and hand. After much practice I committed to the canvas with a syringe. Not oval or off centre – just a perfect circle. 
That inner gold ring is the form that holds the outer ring at bay. Both of these forms are smack bang in the centre of the canvas too so there are no feelings of awkwardness or unevenness. Both circles are perfectly positioned and perfectly applied.
The outer black ring is fused into the background layer so you can’t make any separation between the two. The background itself is a mixture of white and cream paint and offers subtle textural changes in varying light conditions; it’s very relaxed and a bugger to photograph as it keeps changing colour with the shifting hues of light!
For something so apparently simple in composition it is remarkably complex to unravel. Some of that I have eluded to already but to pass this off as just a minimal artwork with two circles is to miss the point.
I think it’s very much a question poser: what really lies beyond all the crap in life? What’s a the heart of us as human beings? Are we empty and void at our core or are we a blank page waiting to be written upon?
Then there are the questions surrounding the endlessness of life and what lies beyond. How much of us continues in an eternal dance? Questions like these have a deeper significance than we may at first have considered. If that doesn’t appear for you when you look at it then no worries, you can always move on to the next one.
