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'His work continues to offer a poetic mixture of exploration and
meditation, |
luke elwes what is essential is invisible to the eye ... the distance between self and other, inside and outside, is hard to fix with any certainty and stability. The drawings mark the beginning of a process but also the process itself. How they evolve is as much about the materials used and how the medium works on any given day as about a specific visual starting point. Whether a reflective re-acquaintance with familiar ground or an instinctive response to some unexpected stimulus (a shell, butterfly, blossom), they are about the significance of looking, remaining alive to the transience and mutability of that act of perception. They travel not so much widely as deeply, absorbing and probing the natural flow of phenomena and the passage of time. From the lines, marks and washes emerges a landscape where much of 'what is essential is invisible to the eye.'
Painting is a continuum of moments, one in which it is not the subject
matter which counts but the trace of a presence, and the process by
which it is represented. The purpose is
not to render the visible, but to render visible, as Paul
Klee said. It is a search for what cannot be found (or which remains
continually elusive). It is as though the real painting remains
elsewhere – the dilemma being that to find it would not only terminate
this painting but the need to paint itself.
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