STUDIO PRACTICE 1970-73

EXPLORING SYMBOLISM

I had many strands of influence in those years. Abstract Expressionism and Adolph Gottlieb’s ‘Pictographs’ were of interest. In these he used symbolic images within a grid as an organising structure. This related to the theme of my dissertation which inspired my studio practice:

‘Man lives in a symbolic universe, culture is a particular ordering of symbols, some private, some public’.

My work at that period was full of enquiry and the mystery of image making. I was looking at the earliest surviving examples of image making by Homo sapiens, like the cave paintings at Altamira dating from thirty thousand years ago. I was fascinated by how art was essential, universal and a part of human life from the start.

When the cave painting ‘artists’ so clearly acknowledge their dependency on other life forms, they send a vital message to our Anthropocene generation about the need to protect biodiversity on which the whole interconnecting web of life depends.