Spooked

2012

oil on canvas

210 x 150cm

Horses had never appeared in my work until this one did, its form finding its way out of my vigorous, chaotic overpainting, on top of what was itself a chaotic, found abstract.

Without reference it took some time for the horse to be fully realised, and when it finally found its form the animal’s spooked expression led me to search for what lay hidden in the foreground tangle, itself strongly informed by the thick impasto of the found original.

So again we have a shamanic bird figure, this time wearing a bird medallion. Again, we have the bird horizon, the beak creating the vent. And more serpents. Jung would have a field day.