A digression from reason

The apathetic moralist attempts to dissect the word 'love' into the platonic, Christian, patriotic, romantic, narcissistic and perhaps the perverse. The word 'love' conjures the image of Anthony and Cleopatra, Jason and Medea, Odysseus and Penelope, Othello and Desdemona and the well rehearsed Romeo and Juliet. These famous lovers represent love at its most consuming, an emotion that is often replicated across history and throughout literature. Indeed the skeptic or the unlucky, is able to deduce that regardless of the lovers, the passion felt is merely replicated, yet the madness that accompanies infatuation dupes the lover into believing the feeling to be utterly unique.


Unlike the altruistic sheen that friendship imposes, love carries the mildewing taint of jealously and selfishness. So the question arises why does the individual pine for love when its passion may whimsically transform into hatred and overwhelming loss? Like the art within the exhibition it is the moment captured, the moment of intimacy within a lonely individualized world that gives the notion of 'love' its alluring magnetism. It is to feel the warmth of another's arms; the want to be the sole occupant of another's thoughts that drives the lonely to seek and the desperate to dwell within the wavering shadow of a youthful lover. Love is both an illusion and a reality, like a shadow it darkens what is lighter, its owner unable to capture it yet not daring to question its presence. The primal passion gives birth to life and often heralds its early destruction. It is yearned then feared, it stands alone yet it is often talked about as a means of social comparison. Love poses an enigma, it calls for an interpretation consistent with personal experience, it evokes history, it may be exploited as a method of torture and will conquer obligation, dignity and reason.

The artist aspires to extend the passion illustrated within their work to the observer, who would be undoubtedly walking alone, weaving themselves through the exhibition, initially without purpose then with maddening fury, desperate to find themselves within the strokes of another's passion.

Zoe