l'Oeil du Palmier - Paintings from Hyères

Studio at Les Ècuries, Hyères, France

L'Oeil du Palmier

The paintings in this exhibition developed from extended periods of work in Hyères, southern France, over the past two and a half years. Both the mediaeval town, with its extensive gardens (most notably those of the Villa Noailles) and the evocative environment of the studio, Les Ècuries, with its crumbling façades and decorative features, provided a rich source of inspiration. The title of the exhibition "The Eye of the Palm" refers to a recurring motif in the work, which developed from a series of drawings of the eye-like shapes found on the pruned trunks of palm trees. In a metaphoric sense, the title may also refer to the eye of the artist, in spontaneously recognising those elements in the external world which connect with those of the inner world. Through the process of painting, these elements become transformed in an imaginative act of reconstruction. A dark stone embedded in plaster reappears as a stone bird; the curvilinear ironwork surrounding the bell tower returns to its natural source as tendrils; an eye-like shape metamorphoses into a leaf shape; plaster falls from the ceiling onto a wet painting and changes its direction. Colour and light, things seen and things heard (the sound of the bell) memory and chance, unite in curious ways. I am drawn to an odd poetry, expressed by Jean Arp as "a secret primal meaning slumbering beneath the world of appearances".