With the world suddenly pivoting to focus on what is close to home, it feels appropriate to search out the magic hiding in our living rooms, gardens, closets, and other spaces in the domestic environment. I’ve begun noticing everyday things like vacuum cleaner tubing, electrical cords, pipes and garden hoses. The new exotic creatures are the moths that fly in the window, and the snails slowly eating the plants in the garden. These are the elements I now consider as I continue to explore the magic quietly embedded in our lives, and what it looks like.
These objects and creatures are fairly invisible due to their ubiquity, and is exactly what makes them distinctly interesting to me. Electrical cords give power. Pipes and hoses cleanse and hydrate. Moths flutter in a vast array of colours, shapes and sizes, and the shell of a snail is an exquisite work of art, a natural expression of an equiangular spiral.
Below are three works in progress; two still in the underpainting stage, and one fleshed out in colour. As before, the pieces represent visual magic spells and are comprised of a few key elements: Something mundane (the electrical cord or garden hose), something exotic (the snail or moth), something in transition (the magenta-red gradient), and a rift or break in reality from which all of these elements arise (the gaping black hole):
The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals I
Treasure Spirits I
Treasure Spirits II