YIN YANG - BACKGROUND CONCEPT

As my work has moved more into the abstract and philosophical over the years, literal places and recognisable structures have given way to suggestion of place. This exhibition of work brings back more references to specific place, giving acknowledgement to the seed from which the abstractions have developed.

Yin yang is a circle split into two teardrop shapes, one dark with a light dot, one light with a dark dot. It says opposites aren’t enemies — they’re halves of one whole, each holding a seed of the other. That’s open-minded thinking in a picture: you don’t discard the thinking you dislike, you notice the truth it may carry. Black and white thinking would be the circle divided in a straight line with no dots, yin yang is what protects against hubris.

Hubris is rigidity. Balance is dynamic equilibrium — two forces that only exist because the other is there. Remove one and both collapse. Abstract painting does the same thing with paint. The composition has no subject to hide behind, so every mark is pure relationship — dark against light, gesture against void, accident against intention. 

The intention of these paintings is to refuse the fantasy of a finished, one-sided truth and show that whatever force seems dominant—whether the explosive sky or the quiet land—already carries the seed of its counterpart. Mastery or certainty is always incomplete, because the opposite is already living inside what you think you fully understand.