A Toe in the Red Sea
A new horizon, literally and figuratively. These notes began in March 2023, shortly before a trip to the Red Sea, with a rather unlikely idea: a children’s book with abstract pictures.
I imagined a party under the sea, with sea creatures inviting children to join in. One study led to another. I began abstracting the water, fish and divers, trying to avoid images that were merely sweet or pleasing. How far could I take the abstraction while keeping something of the experience?
Soon afterwards I realised I really needed a holiday. The plan became twelve days at the Red Sea, where I had been diving many years earlier. My biological clock would soon be saying, “Diving? You should have thought of that earlier!” Well, earlier was now. I was looking forward to getting into the water.
A New Horizon
If my conscience stirred, I could always call it a study visit. What would I study? Fish — in the sea and in the pan. Above all, though, I wanted to explore a new sense of space in my painting.
A few weeks earlier I had come across a meditation exercise: imagine sitting somewhere high, feeling the wide horizon before you. Easy enough. Then imagine the horizon behind you, and to the left and right. That small change in attention stayed with me.
When I paint, I usually concentrate on what is in front of me: composition, colour and the movement of forces on the paper. What happens if I imagine myself inside the action instead? I had given much less attention to the horizon behind me, or at my sides. A painting still has a flat surface, of course. I wanted to see whether a different inner position might change the space it suggests.[1]
The first small results encouraged me. I may see more in them than another viewer does — I know what I was looking for — but that is enough to make me continue.
Study One
Before leaving, I began painting studies of what I hoped to encounter in the second half of March. The first is about light and the feeling of entering water. There is no literal fish here; I wanted something of the sensation of fish and water without drawing either in a straightforward way.
Study Two
The second study uses a similar arrangement, but light plays a more active part. Colour and a small opening at the lower right are meant to suggest depth. The dark areas below can read as shadows, implying a light source behind the diver — or behind us as viewers.
Does that create a space behind the viewer as well as in front? I cannot settle that by explaining it. For now, the question gives me something useful to paint towards.
Footnotes
[1] A listening analogy may help: mono gives us a single sound source, stereo separates it, and surround sound seems to place us within it. I would like something of that last sensation in a picture. I am drawn to trying out an idea and seeing what it makes possible. My original notes also mentioned the “Law of Attraction”; here I use immersion in an idea as a personal working approach, without claiming that thought itself determines external events. ↩
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