Yellow River

Like Man in a Boat, this painting was fed by a narrative around my brother and an experience on water in The Rockies. Initially inspired by some drawings made on the hoof on the Snake River in Wyoming, the panel paintings Yellow River and Man in a Boat should be re-titled with my brother Piers’s name, as the effervescent wilderness-man of the Earth he was. I painted a series of images of him in the outback. These pictures became as much an escapist world for him as he fought to survive in the ICU unit in Sydney, Australia. Both Man in a Boat and Yellow River were made as escape journeys for his imagination, so while dreaming, he could fly low over water and see himself fishing at the magic hour as he was being operated on. I see them as visual humming aids, for him to drown out the noises of the serious stuff the surgical team were performing. The trees lean over perilously like skittles - TH