Spectre

Paracosm is a series of pen and ink drawings which began as creative experiments. To the artist, the act of drawing is an obsessive activity. It entails making a mark; line by line. It eventually becomes a repetition, a meditation on what lines can form.

Successive marks and strokes over time gradually accumulate into a mass of lines. A mindscape takes shape, meandering into a strange universe populated by celestial objects such as nebulae and planetary fragments. Forms resembling passages from Chinese landscape painting float into view, yet they are similarly reminiscent of micro-organisms and nerve cells found under an electron microscope. Highly defined areas are in contrast with sections where blurred forms and lines dissolve into mist. This seems to suggest a transformative act is taking place, but what does it mean? Is it reflective of the constantly changing thoughts and ideas of the internal mindscape? Or is it indicative of external phenomena, the ebb and flow of flux in nature? Yet on the other hand, the swirling pattern of lines could also hint at the cosmos.

For the artist, drawing is both a meditative and creative act. The works present an internal cosmos, his paracosm.

Paracosm is formed from the combination of two Greek words; namely pará (beside, alongside) and ‎kósmos (world, universe).