Cornwall has a maritime landscape and climate and in 2008 I set out to celebrate this fact through an exploration of what I called it's Ocean Light. “In a sense, the universe is a great ocean of life. This ocean is itself in a constant state of flux; it is continually moving and changing, performing the rhythm of birth and death.”(2) This is how my Buddhist mentor Daisaku Ikeda* used the image of the ocean which gave me a growing awareness of its influence and significance as I put that collection together. Later, in 2009-'10 it was what I call the Lived-in Landscape of Cornwall that came to fascinate me and I'm aware that it was Buddhist teachings on the inseparability of life and its environment that lay behind the appeal of this theme for me. Currently I'm working on a collection that I'm calling The Turning Year. Here it's a sense of the rhythm of life, of what Buddhism terms the Mystic Law or Myoho, as it's expressed for example in the constant change we experience through the seasons of the year, that has emerged for me as an underlying theme.
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For a fuller statement about The Turning Year click here.
For more information on the Buddhism I practice click here (SGI-UK website).
*For more about the influence of my Buddhist mentor on the re-launch of my career as an artist click here.