Black ink paintings are a tradition in China and Japan, where it is called Sumi-e or Suibokuga. I call them Scatterlings, a word that means wanderer in order to capture the freedom of expression these works explore.
Scatterlings endeavour to empty you of preconceived notions, indeed, to remove the sense of self, in the manner of Zen. Within my work as an abstract artist, these works continue to avoid the usual reference points which we use in navigating the real world.
Getting us to go ‘back’ into our perceptions, is to move into an unmediated perspective on the art (that is, not filtered by language or what we like or don’t like). The real world is full of objects and we of course are objects for each other. The problem of ‘other minds’ is whether the world is simply a fiction of my own mind and that there isn’t anything ‘out there’ — you, the viewer, are a fiction in my mind! Reaching to the ultimate reality of objects is mediated by how our senses tell us what is there and how we construct the world through words or mathematics or our imagined view of the what our senses and imagination are constructing.
These are usually on Xuan (rice) paper, mulberry paper, watercolour paper and canvas panels. I use Japanese black ink, and acrylic paint on the canvas panels.
