James Guppy

5 May - 6 July 2016

The truly beautiful is compelling.  It demands things of us and this compulsion is dangerous.  In these paintings I am trying to suggest both the beauty and the danger.

These works are part of a series of paintings that focus on flowers coming out of the sky… suggesting perhaps portents, the archangel Gabriel, fighter pilots or UFOs.  I am often asked what my paintings "mean".  While I am drawn to particular images as an allusion, a metaphor or a suggestion of something … as to their meaning or what that something might be;  I really don't know.  I doubt my words can even hint at the impulses which produce the works. Interpretation can only be left to the viewer, which is as it should be.

-  James Guppy, 2016