The Perfection of Silver Painting

The Title of this painting derives from an Alchemical Emblem although it looks significantly different to this. The Author Peter Levenda puts forward the theory that the practices of Western Alchemy and Eastern Tantra are both means towards the same end; discovering and interpreting the moment of creation and intervening in it. In Alchemy this is achieved boiling, reducing, diluting and otherwise physically manipulating ambiguously named physical materials to create something metaphysical and magical, with Tantra, bodily fluids and energies are similarly manipulated towards the same purpose. I hope the actors in these images will be perceived by viewers to be involved in some, stylised, ritual, the purpose of which remains ambiguous; both titillating and alienating, inviting and resisting. The process of painting is in many ways somewhat similar, ordinary vegetable oils and minerals are combined in time honoured ways to produce an illusory image which represents more than just depiction of space using colours and shapes, it also, in certain instances produces meaning, something in which the viewer inevitably and occasionally, unwittingly connives.