While executing another project, Mike and Lance took an a quick side venture: with a canvas each and a box of acrylics, they each created a painting that would flow instantaneously, with no prior conception or predominant ideas. Pure instant creativity.
Mike: “We had been so drawn to the moon in the Earthwaves work and their link to stone circles, I found myself starting with a circle and brush work that was loose and wavy. Then I saw the moon emerging from moonlike imagery appearing from the strokes. Large brushstrokes conveyed a sense of energy and a sense of planetary power emerged in my mind from the mark marking. At the end I had a vivid sense of the hidden forces in the universe that drive everything with things in complex orbits. The colours also reminded me of the universe as seen by the Marvel film “Dr Strange”. The intuitive, automatic style of painting turned out to be quite a revelatory conceptual expression, all from a blank canvas and a blank creative mind.”
Lance: “I seem to be automatically attracted to flowing forms when creating drawn or painted works; for example the drawing Dancers which Mike used as the basis for decorating his ceramics work. There is something about the sensuality of these forms, a rejection of anything that is too angular, too jarring. Also the influence of water informs the marks I make; just as rivers carve their way through the landscape, so the paint, pen or crayon – whatever I am using – traces its way over the surface of the canvas. Even I can’t predict which way it wander; I just let the moment guide me and then build upon that.
The fact that it ended up looking somewhat human – something like a person with long hair or a shawl, reminiscent of the work of Edvard Munch – was purely unintentional.”