Original, oil and acrylic, abstract, contemporary painting.

Size:  (W) 100 x  (H) 100 x (D) 5cm (with frame).

Framed: Professionally framed. White painted wood with hanging equipment.

Inspiration: Asclepius was the Greek god of healing and his staff, with a single serpent wound around it, is still the emblem of medicine today. Snakes shed their skins and in the ancient world that made them a sign of renewal, of something coming through what it has outgrown. In this painting a black panel sits at the top of the canvas like a sealed box and colour has torn its way through it, layer over layer, the way an old poster is ripped back to reveal everything that was pasted beneath. From the lower corner of that box a small serpent slips out into the open ground, almost unnoticed and it is the quiet heart of the work: healing emerging from what has been held in the dark.

Around it the structure holds steady. Red lines in three shades descend from the panel like a measure being taken, blue and ochre forms and a single block of fluorescent orange sit in the warm, worn ground and a soft cluster in the lower corner gathers like a half-remembered thought. Look closely and you'll find two eyes in the surface, watching.

Series: Palimpsest. Paintings built in layers, scraped back and written over, where earlier marks, figures and fragments surface through the paint, so that what lies beneath is never fully hidden.

A question to sit with: what in you is ready to come out of the box?