Ben Taylor 2013

The diver disappears, wavers in the glassy swell of deep water, in time, re-emerges. These works reflect on a childhood memory and revive thoughts and feelings of anxious delight watching bubbles surface, waiting for the plongeur to rise; bringing to mind time passing, that time bobbing up and down on the Harbour, elapsed time. 

With that there is aslo a sensation of quiet metamorphosis, transformation, pleasure in the use of paint all through this series.  Joy in the materials and the pour and flow of it on big surfaces. Within this semi abstract space a sense of being on the threshold of another sort of flow, a dream, hypnogogic shapes looming before sleep. We watch and are drawn into the liminal bright world of the diver, rush up to the doorway and hesitate there to look on and walk through.

Absraction, reflection underpin the works but a grounding figurative presence anchors the eye sets up vibrating colour harmonies. Paintings, such as "Diver" (2012),  reference very gently Caspar David Friederich, touching on the, slightly, anxiety provoking sublime. A sof touch, yet these looming figures could be almost anything from the Golem to something rising from a foggy marshland, The Thing, or just Dad getting ready for work