Axis Mundi 

Artist Statment:  

Axis Mundi - literally, axis of the world - is the cosmic tree or pillar that connects heaven and earth, the cosmic axis of the world, in which the patterns of heaven are mirrored on the surface of the earth. The characteristic geometry and measure of the form is found in the plans of temples, cities, landscape and cultural artifacts throughout the world. I have been making initimate, highly detailed and decorated images incorporating Tree of Life (Axis Mundi) images for the last 15 years. All of these works incorporate the common themes of gold and silver leafing, patterned backgrounds and a form and structure reminiscent of early illuminated manuscripts. 

The tree of life images began to enter my work after I had become interested in the physical and symbolic form and structure of growing trees. The symbolic power of the tree has been a constant and repeated presence in art. From Celtic decoration to Dante's Paradiso to Brancusi's endless column to Mira's ladder of escape, Dog Baying the Moon, to David Nash's Charred Column it has been used to express the spiritual highway between the profane and sacred worlds. At the end of the millennium, the contrast between the awe inspiring strength and the utter vulnerability of a thousand year old tree, under attack as technology and population place increasing demands on our planet, is a symbol of the struggle taking place between Nature and Culture. 

The patterns and trees come from a wide variety of sources. Although the most common source is illuminated manuscripts, others include Chinese and Celtic art, Japanese prints and lexicons of decorative forms. Directly quoted the images are assembled to recall the structures and the sacred symbology of illuminated manuscripts. When altered and reinvented they are embodiment of the structures and properties of the contemporary world. 

I am a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and my recent work has begun to include cosmological images and events. From observation of the sky and through reading, images of distant objects set a symbolic stage. The centre of our galaxy, a black hole, the zodiacal light all appear in the work as a canopy that the tree of life reaches towards marking, the passage of time and life and the movement of the cosmos. 

Flattened against highly decorated backgrounds the trees look like leaves pressed and preserved in a book, frozen in time, framed and protected by their gold and silver armour for future contemplation and meditation. Over stylized to enhance the two dimensional and decorative rather than the illusionistic and representational the works' content lies within the patterns of its construction. Just as the original manuscripts embodied the beliefs and spiritual makeup of their authors encoded in arcane symbology, so these works suggest a world of signs and symbols that is revealed through careful examination of its patterns and structures. 

The works in this exhibition represent many thousands of hours of painstaking and careful work. It is through this attention to detail, to the minutiae of pattern and material that the presence of the artist is manifested and entered into the continuum that is the history of the artist as interpreter of the world.