RELIQUARY

or, Each season of life lays its flowers on the great heap of history, reverent and silent beyond time’s reach.

Ochre, wild-foraged ochres, umber, nicosian earth, red hematite, manganese oxide, magnetite, handmade bone black, animal bones and teeth, wild pine charcoal, graphite, cinnabar, desert sand, beach sand, ultra lightweight modelling paste, moss, lichen, earth, egyptian blue, gemstone grade turqoise, 22k gold, malachite, kaolinite, sepiolite, wild and processed clays, handmade botanical inks, handmade botanical lake pigments, oilstick, oil, acrylic, damar varnish, and gamvar on stretched canvas.

A massive private commission for a family of ultra-modern collectors, I spent two full years creating this piece. It layers 3 separate eras of art history on top of each other--The Prehistoric; Ancient Egyption; and Impressionist. Each strata is built from historically accurate pigments and materials, and deploys visual motifs from that time period. The prehistoric layer, highly influenced by paleolithic cave painting and the work of David-Lewis Williams, uses things like umbers, ochres and animal bones and teeth I hand-processed. Following this, for the Egyptian layer I rebuilt the facade of female Pharaoh Hatshepshut's mortuary temple, from a 'sandstone' I aggregated myself with desert sand, and a flowing nile of Egyptian Blue archeo-pigment and gemstone turqoise. Finally, the understructure was assaulted with gaudy and fanciful flights of Impressionist pigments in tubed oil paint--think bright pops of chromiums, cadmiums and manganese violets. To me, it's like the world--complex, full of secrets, information-dense and a joy to excavate with your eyes.

5.5' x 8'
Private Collection, Canada.