THE TRAVELLER

I am a traveller on a journey and I stand, in the middle of a vacant space looking upward into the sky of inky blackness pierced by stars. I stand on the edge of the cliff and am motionless as the thundering waves push to the shore and suck away again. I sit on the very top of the mountain I have just climbed, and soak up the heat of the sun and feel the caress of a gentle breeze and I stand, staring out to the shimmering desert horizon, listening to the plaintive cry of birds soaring in the thermals. Euphoria and melancholy wash over me for I am nothing and everything. I am the centre of the universe and I am a mere speck in time.’

The traveller is speaking of universal experiences that trigger a consciousness of existence, a state of contemplation that gives us an awareness of life and death, of time and space. It brings us to the inexplicable, the invisible, the intangible, the magical, and the consequential desire to know and explain. Science, art and religious belief systems have always attempted to fulfil that desire, to search out meaning and explanation, to establish some sense of connection and equilibrium.

The work of Luis Geraldes is born out of the same desire.  Geraldes is concerned with a search for the connectedness of things, the crossing of boundaries, the bringing together of mind, body and spirit. Through his interest in eastern and western belief systems, and the rituals and ceremonies of ancient cultures, he is investigating those things that are common to us all, the threads that bind the present with the past and the future. At the same time he is looking at how contemporary science is attempting to explain the make up of the world, the creation and survival of all things.

Luis Geraldes work’s in this exhibition bring together things felt and knowledge gained.  The paint itself has a physical presence; attention is brought to the very materiality of these works, the stuff of matter.  The implication of land, sea and sky come through the divisions in the composition of the images, and we sense a suggestion of the elemental forces of earth, wind, fire, water and spirit. The symbols are derived from abstract scientific diagrams concerning, atoms, neutrons, protons, but also ancient cultures referencing the circle of life and the egg of creation. The combined result is a certain vibration, an energy, a pulse within the work. There is a sense that within these images there is life and death, loss and hope, a continuum. They are the diary of a traveller.