CELESTIAL : These two paintings originated after an astrophysicist saw a painting (Night Coppice, 1999) which he thought related to stars when in fact it was about the reflection of light from tiny droplets of water on foliage.

They are akin to what the Hubble Telescope might see but the major difference being that I am able to move the constellations around and change the order of the universe!

There are hidden geometries and interlocking movements within the painting. There is an overall oval with other smaller climaxes and tiny ‘happenings’ that allow for a slow release of information. So what might appear as a bit of a jumble at first does, in fact, have an underlying order and structure.

These painting are amongst the first that explored a new language of using dots to represent light sources. While it is clearly impossible to do this using paint, the brain is likely to interpret it as light in the fraction of a second before reality sets in, which can encourage the eye to move around the canvas.