Scott Elk
Desire Lines - Silverwater Park, 2022
Oil on board
65cm x 42cm

Here I was starting to abstract my Absence Metastructure ring forms, and filling in the middle hole to create solid boulder like objects I imagined making out of clay. This painting I consider one of my more successful attempts at walking that fine balance between fresh and over-worked. The colours also really work, accentuated by the neutral earthy colours. There is a whole universe to explore here.

This painting formed the middle section of an 18 page artist book featuring 36 paintings bound together with a ceramic front and back cover. This is the moment form and colour started exploding.

DETAIL:

Desire Lines

The majority of work produced in 2022 falls into my Desire Lines series of paintings, drawings, screenprints, and ceramics. The series is about relationship to place, connection to people, and the sometimes intoxicating, head-fucking connection of physical interaction.

A desire line, is a term often referred to in urban or transportation planning, as a path created as a consequence of human traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. It is the way taken by choice, by desire, and by necessity when following the heart. It is movement with intention.

In a real world practical application, the desire lines have the possibility to connect people resulting in events along a time line. I see people as these spinning vortexes of energy, in a positive sense like galaxies spinning and reaching out, and in contrast, negatively sucking everything towards themselves like black holes spinning. When two of these things collide, wondrous and unexpected things can happen; colours swirl, planets could be flung out of orbit, or set in a new orbit, momentarily or until the end of time. My interpretation of these desire lines is constantly searching to insert the human element of connection into fragmented, and abstracted forms.