After Saint Nicholas
Research Documentation
Completed work
Critical Practice
The Sea
Much of my work Previous to the MA has been concerned with the Sea, boats and sailors. I was particularly impressed by the panel of Saint Nicholas as the patron Saint of Sailors in the Quaratesi Polytch by Gentility da Fabriano. It shows Saint Nicholas flying above a storm stricken ship. He resembles a super hero, a sky diver in a yellow bubble of light. The bizarre pillars of storm clouds line the horizon, menacing sirens swim below the boat. I like to think the Saint Nicholas is shown as how a medieval sailor in a storm doomed ship might have hoped the Saint would have appeared; a guiding beacon above the ship, not, as he is usually shown, as being amongst the sailors on board the ship (as the myth goes).
After Saint Nicholas
I wanted to make an updated version of the da Fabriano painting, where st Nicholas has retired from saving sailors but where mermaids and sirens still swam. Where the Sea was a sculpture form resembling a wooden boat but where mermaids and sirens still swam. See After Saint Nicholas
After Saint Nicholas
After Saint Nicholas 2
Hew Locke
After showing After Saint Nicholas in a group crit I was advised to look at the work of Hew Locke.
Read articles - https://www.1stdibs.com/introspective-magazine/hew-locke-at-edward-tyler-nahem/
https://repeatingislands.com/2017/03/25/hew-lockes-on-the-tethys-sea-at-the-57th-venice-biennale/
At the Venice Biannial Locke hung models of ships and boats of all sizes and world cultures. He decorated them with all manor of objects, referencing shamanism, religion, slavery, travel, migration and, above all, the Northern European traditions of Votive Ships in churches. Locke refers to them as ‘vessels of the soul’.
After Saint Nicholas 2
I saw a YouTube video of two skydivers in wingsuits jumping off a mountain and flying into a plane that was also flying -https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z7pUzghJX4
I wondered what a medieval sailor who was terrified in a storm would make of the sport of wingsuit sky diving. I painted Saint Nicholas as a wing suit base jumper. I revisited the work of Chagal and Max Beckman’s Falling Man.
Hew Locke
Votive Ships
I researched Votive ships. These are models of ships that hang in churches throughout Europe. They were donated by ship captains who survived shipwrecks or as offerings for safe passage.
I started designing my own Votive Ships, painting them in watercolour and guache
