In the heart of matter there grows an obscure vegetation; in the night of matter black flowers blossom. They already have their velvet and the formula of their scent.
Gaston Bachelard
Winter , 150 cm 120 cm , cavas acrylic paint, 2022
“ 4 o'clock “, 150 x 76 cm , acrylic ink on canvas, 2022
"The lure of the dark" , 101 cm x 76 cm, ink on canvas, 2022
'The Ghost of Genji's love’, 100cm x 70 cm, ink on canvas, 2022
'Waiting for guest by the lamp light ‘, 150 x 120 cm , ink on canvas, 2022
"Parade of ghosts", 122 cm x 92 cm , Acrylic on canvas, 2022
"Some colours are made at night", 150 cm x 120 cm , Acrylic on canvas 2022
The remarkable thing about Bachelard’s black flowers is that not only do they immediately annihilate the mechanistic model of science, asserting instead a vitalist organicism at the very heart of the material world; but that they establish the very principle of the material imagination. The imagination has already been produced, in the external world, by the material formulas that produce sensation in us – we are objectified by matter and its formulas, we are materialized by it – it is not that we, objectify matter. But there is another aspect to this principle. The function of the material imagination is to strengthen and prolong sensation through a sustained reverie, or contemplation of, a constrained network of correspondences among a small number of imagined elements – as for Baudalaire, between perfume, sound and color. Thus, the material imagination materializes consciousness, but in such a way that it produces powerful sentiment as a duration in time as it transforms with each transition to each new element. As Deleuze comments: the eye also has a tactile function, which requires that sight be transformed at the level of skin. This reversal of aesthetic effect then becomes an instrument with which we may reexamine any artwork. Dr Mark Bartlett