Switch on then till I see where I’m going 2023 – 50 x 40cm, acrylic on canvas
The title is a pragmatic instruction to illuminate the immediate path without knowing the destination, the light switched on not to see the whole but to see the next step. The departure initiated before the destination is known. The uprooting began before the horizon was visible.
The main flower is not growing. It is leaving.
The mutation is the condition of leaving. This flower is not quite any specific species: it has the peony’s fullness, the rose’s structure, and something else entirely in the gold and green interior visible at the centre of the upper bloom, an internal complexity that belongs to no conventional flower. The switch has been turned on. The immediate path is illuminated. The destination remains at the edge of perception, visible only as a gap in the dark.
The stem crosses every horizontal layer of the canvas in its upward arc, moving toward the partial glimpse of sky without stopping at any of the boundaries that divide the canvas into its managed zones.
Switch on then. It’s about embracing your own identity in a world that wants everyone to be the same.