Oil on Canvas 2004-5

Matrix: a system or mass in which structures and forms are embedded; an environment or material in which something can develop. 

Ether: an omnipresent substance formerly thought to permeate all space and to transmit light. 

Art as megalomania: The desire to see an entire universe of ones own, of light and weight and structure, is perhaps a bit of a worry.  These paintings try to be that, to have shapes as characters, inhabiting a separate world.  But really, I hope, one could justify this as the adult version of playing with dolls houses, toy soldiers or farms. 
There are rebellions against rules, collisions of forms, power as well as delicacy, ugliness and darkness, beauty and light.  This abstraction is a game, a piece of theatre, issuing an invitation to imagine another place, to play by its rules or within its system, to sit within its borders just for a while. 

Inspirations:  Swimming pools and squash courts, viewed from the balconies above, gave rise to ideas about action in enclosed spaces.  The geometric structures, with coloured lines, tiled floors, railings and steps, are essentially boxes containing life and heat, rules of engagement and chaos.
These self-contained spaces may provide a little escape from the world, with the total absorption in an activity, game, or sensation; they where a good starting point for creating my own such spaces on canvas.