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Financial Climate

Much of my work explores the changes that are taking place in our climate and natural environment and how those changes are related to activity in the worlds of finance and business.

Currently there are five groups of works:

Storm
Paintings about the increasingly extreme weather on the east coast of England (images 1-3).

Too near the sun
Works inspired by the Greek classical myths of Icarus and Phaeton (images 4-5).

Icarus fell into the sea and drowned, after he flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax fixing the feather wings made by his father Daedalus, for their escape from Minoan Crete.

Phaeton persuaded his father, the sun-god Helios, to let him drive his chariot. He was unable to control its horses, so the chariot went too close to the earth, burning it, and too far from it, freezing it.

The background to Phaeton is pure white, not grey as shown in the image.

Oil
Images made on stock report pages of the Financial Times, highlighting the role of oil companies in causing starvation through diverting maize crops to the production of ethanol, and increasing heatwaves and climate change by the sale of fossil fuel oil (images 6-7).

Flash Trading
Works made on computer print-outs of the financial algorithms used in high speed financial trading, challenging them with images of the very different time-scales and experiences of the human and natural worlds (images 8-17).

Fossil Fuel shows the fossilised remains of plants that form the basis of coal deposits.

Dark room trading is stock market trading by institutional investors, with others excluded. Visually this work is influenced by Cezanne's Card Players.

Slow growth uses imagery of slow-growing lichens.

The Bear and The Bull are the terms used to describe stock market trading that is at reduced or increased values respectively. They are also constellations.


All at sea
A final image of how we are trying to survive and may yet enjoy a last swim (image 18).

For related images see Trees and weather collection.