The Measurement of Time Oil on Canvas 48X36ins

Here are two new paintings concerned with the intangible nature of time and reality.  Time is a very slippery customer.  If you try to get your hands on time, it trickles through your fingers like sand running through an hourglass. Everyone is sure that time is there but they just can’t get hold of it.  Maybe they can’t get hold of it because it isn’t there at all.  But if it isn’t there at all, why does it play such a fundamental role in every moment of our existence?

My first painting shows an hourglass, a traditional and ancient measure of time. The upper globe shows the busy Antrim Road, Belfast, at Atlantic Avenue.  It captures a moment in everyday life, a moment in time.  The sands of time drain into the lower globe but into a very different world. The timeless Great Pyramids of Giza and another traditional measure of time dominate the background while a man and a dog stroll past in the foreground.  This collection of disparate paraphernalia is simply food for thought. It is for the viewer to come to his or her own conclusion.

The Enigma of Reality Oil on Canvas 48X36ins

The second painting again draws its imagery from the Antrim Road, close to where I live and work.  It is concerned with the nature of reality.  Reality seems to be very fundamental and dependable.  Something, with whatever amount of poking and prodding, remains reassuringly solid.  However, think about our modern-day lust for simulated reality and our many journies in cyberspace.  Could we be a brain in a bell jar? Again food for thought.  Both paintings will be exhibited at the Royal Ulster Academy Exhibition at the Ulster Museum, Stranmillis, Belfast from 19th October 2018.