The Bequia Paintings, begun in 2020 are an exploration of abstraction completed during my annual residency on the island of Bequia in the Grenadines. For the first two years I weathered first the isolation of coronavirus and then, thirty two days of explosive volcanic eruptions on the nearby island of St. Vincent which coated the landscape in fine ash. The third year was under the shadow of war in Ukraine. Inspired by these events, ocean breezes, local color and culture, I began to transmute sense and image into a pictorial representation of this experience. In many of the pieces photographs have been digitally abstracted beyond any point of recognition into a sort of coded pattern. In other cases I used the photographic images more graphically. Throughout the work, I’ve been fascinated by color relationships. I frequently sample photographs taken there as well as images of other paintings to distill individual hues which find their way as random markings into the work. As an example, The color patches in “Nude Ascending the Volcano” are sampled from JMW Turner’s 1816 depiction of La Soufrière’erupting.
Included in this collection is an ongoing seascape series depicting the islands, Baliceaux and Battowia which are visible from my studio. Beyond them lies nothing but a great expanse of ocean across which blows the dust of Saharan sands.
