'Nothing appears in the world without risk and tension' Dr Bayo Akomolafe

 

I came across this tree trunk standing in a country park, it was marked with a faded cross, sealing its fate.

This death of a tree, a totem to fragility and a reminder of how tenuous life is.

I've been working on a series of bricolages dealing with how we as humans embody the world of more than human. How we have worked with and against the land. I want now more than ever to 'feel' alive. To sense, and to see beyond me.

I started work on 'The beautiful, terrible evidence that we have lived' a few weeks before my heart attack, so it kind of holds the reality of how the body can suddenly suffer and potentially die. I am in tension , and that tension is living..

I admit that finding purpose after a major life event is a bit of a frightening and doubtfilled journey, I've wondered about the point of making art. What would have happened to all this work if I had died ?

I have to live, and so I step back out into the land.

I have also started to re-work my diptych about our mineral bodies and walking, and have decided to call it 'communion'.

Paul.