I started looking for you

Sand, red clay, glue on canvas
100 x 100 x 3 cm
Unframed

"The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you" — Rumi

Oaxaca ~ a city alive with colour and vibrance ~ sits in a valley ringed by mountains. Looking outward to those ancient, sun-drenched peaks creates a particular kind of wonder. This painting lives in that space between the man-made and the elemental, between the city's exuberant warmth and the mountains' unhurried permanence. Being in this space makes me think that everything beautiful that humans have created is inspired by nature first. 

Made from sand and red clay, the earth itself becomes both material and meaning. The deep terracotta and rust tones hold the warmth of sunrise on rock, while the cooler grey above suggests distance, atmosphere, the soft dissolve of dawn before the light, and the day, has quite decided what it wants to do. Like Rumi's searching, there is no fixed destination ~ only the looking, and what it opens up.