The painting Breathe is a personal catharsis and an abstract visual representation of human existence translated through the dream state and conscious awakenings experienced over the course of my life. Dreams are a personal fascination that I explore and attempt to translate to utilize many of the vibrant visual and spoken messages I take from lucid dreams incorporating voices stating important messages in concert with cascades of colourful pixels.
Although the picture is abstract the landscape style composition guides the spectator on life’s pathway, its stages and steps of growth which move toward the idea of stimulating the big universal questions and belief based considerations like where do we come from and where are we going, as an example the revelation of alpha and the omega.
Revelation 22 …12 “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to each person according to what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” 14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by its gates.…15 But outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
The universality in the content of Breathe is also reflected in classic selections from philosophers such as Plato and the Parable of the Cave notably “volte face” which serves as an appropriate metaphor for several of the expressions I attempt to express to the spectator:
The world of appearances is compared to a dark subterranean cave, the world of reality to the brilliant light outside; the unenlightened minds of ordinary people have their counterpart in the prisoners in the cave, deceived by the shadows of puppets, while the conversion of the philosopher is symbolized by the liberation of a prisoner who is compelled to make a volte face and emerge into the dazzling light; his social conscience, by his return to the cave (and his need of becoming accustomed again to its darkness, however awkwardly, to set others free.