Painting: ‘Unity’
Painted for Caroline & Natalie in Dec 07, to mark their wedding in September
For Caroline & Nat: This painting and its symbols represent your relationship. I hope it will help to remind you that you are both strong and interesting women in your own right, but when you work together, you create another dynamic which is a wonderful union of your collective feisty-ness which makes you an unstoppable force.
Sometimes I paint pictures that are stuffed full of symbols, where colour takes a back seat. However, the meaning in this painting is dominated by colour and the complexities of what those colours represent.
The linear patterns created by the groups of dots in this picture, represent your journey. Starting on the left, the two journeys that cross and intermingle with each other are your individual characters. Natalie as a sunnier and very constant force (red & cream) Caroline as the more volatile and darker force (brown & mauve).
Your journeys show that although you have been together for some time, you have not always worked as one (who does?) but that you have worked hard to stay united, finally sitting down to make an important decision to make a lasting commitment to each other, represented by the ‘people meeting’ brown symbol at the centre of the painting.
From the point of this decision, your lives and characters have bonded together, resulting in what is a strongly attractive and very harmonious mingling of strengths, showing that together you can take your lives in any direction and it will always feel right. The combination of your colours is very complementary and your combined journey seems to flow effortlessly around the painting, filling the canvass in an interesting yet comfortable way.
Your journeys rest on a background of two key colours. At the top, an earthy red represents the grounded and realistic nature of your relationship, which sits in a world dominated by women, characterised in Aboriginal art by deep bloody reds. The circular patterns top and bottom ‘tastefully’ symbolise breasts, again representing the female-centric world your relationship inhabits.
This is all just an elaborate excuse to tell you I think you are great, I love you both and I wish you so much happiness that your faces ache. Keep working at staying united – it suits you!
<I always felt this painting needed more work and if the girls haven’t chucked it, I hope to add to it sometime.