Our Resolute Belief in the Unidentified and Invisible (2021)

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Oil on Re-Claimed Canvas 900mm x 1200mm

£1,250

 

From a series of works made in response to - 'Crossing Over - The Vietnam Stories' by Richard Currey. Beautiful, terrifying, ear-piercing poetry.

 

I found these shots on my phone, taken just as the painting was finished. The works look different at different times of day, early morning, dusk, night, inside, outside. I made the painting outside, it was a clear day with no direct sunlight but a gentle ambient light. It seems to capture the surface details of the old canvas I had rescued and re-used, and the background, which represents jungle, looks pretty nice here.

 

Context for those interested:

‘Now the only sounds are sounds of the forest. There is a nerve-end interference inside my ears, electrical, buzzing, and I know it’s nothing except my own body attempting to stay in one place, in one piece. This encounter will be reported as enemy contact, although none of us could confirm beyond a doubt that we were not shooting at a friendly unit. Australians, South Vietnamese, other Americans. We could not even confirm that anything happened beyond some shared hallucination, beyond an exercise of our new and resolute belief in the unidentified and invisible, in the lyrical panic of ghosts’.

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Richard Currey