Kundalini

1995-1998

quintych:

oil on canvas

274 x 448cm

There is the idea that goldfish, given the chance, will grow to the size of their environment. Well, in a roundabout sort of way, this could said about the making of my largest work to date, Kundalini.

This goldfish business came about in 1995, after the core group of trustees who had founded the Art House lost the lease on the Hilly Fields Studios, but fortuitously had the opportunity to form another arts charity, Cor Blimey Arts and take up another disused school at Catherine Grove, Greenwich.

As a result, I ended up with the school’s cavernous science lab and inherited five frames which had been part of the benches in the lab. In similar fashion to the way the three panels informed the making of Flight One, these five, heavy, hardwood frames drew me into imagination and process that led to the making of Kundalini, but, compared to the making of Flight One in a greatly expanded way: Flight One is a zoetrope consisting of ten apertures, Kundalini is made up of a hundred.

The development of reference material, drawn and photographed, and the painting itself took place between 1995 and 1998 and evolved through many phases.

At one point, very early on, there was a human-scale figure in the center panel, but this was washed away sometime during its making. I can, however, still see where it was; a little of him remains. The central snake motif also came and went, but a good amount of it was later exhumed and stayed. At one point I rotated the panels 180 degrees and worked on the ‘sky’. There were months when I didn’t work on it at all. The winters and summers came and went. The motif of the flower/seed, whatever it is, turned up at the end.

One day, another Catherine Grove artist, Oleg came and sat in the studio. After observing the work and sipping his tea he mused: ‘It’s like Dali’s Crucifixion, but no Christ’. I was able to show him where the figure had been. He didn’t seem surprised.

My old friend Craig had been talking about Kundalini, a meditation that had been developed by Osho. For some reason this word caught in my mind as I was working on the painting and stuck. To this day I don’t know why, as at that time I didn’t consciously know the meaning of the word.

I built a studio in Katoomba to house this work, and I enjoy it every day. I doubt that I will ever part with it, as it is as much part of my life as it is now part of the building.

juncture will be the fourth time that Kundalini has been exhibited.