Wayne Vivier - Local image #48-63, Savage bloom (Repetition series)

https://youtu.be/cZJ2CaWGVd4

Artist statement for Savage bloom by Wayne Vivier

I have set up the paintings on the wall, precariously, each one balancing on a nail. It took me a long time to set this up, so I really hope that we have a good session contemplating these paintings. This is a series, local images #48-63, as one work; each panel burning the other, influencing the other, each one being among others. The initial themes that impress (that makes an impression, surfaces, manifests, emerges) is decline, or endurance and decline, and disintegration. Right now, as I write this, I am experiencing the optical effect of cogwheels turning. Every time I move my eyes, the flowers seem to move, or turn; and then quickly settle, as I fix my gaze; as if they secretly move when I am not looking. When reading these works in the order they were made, like a text, the narrative commences quite brightly and cheerily: two flowers, or two souls, touching; determined beings, enabled beings; but with dark centres, involved selfish centres. They have a strong determined presence at first; fiery orange petals, which grow paler, as a sort of climax starts; it is as if they start to forget themselves, and they grow paler, their centres become less darkened, and then disappear; or become void and vacant; as they climax. The petals blaze now at climax, the centres are gone, they forget themselves, or are they ecstatic? When they climax, where do they go? After this, the centres start darkening again, the petals start fading, and the disintegration starts. The centres grow dark and selfish again; the petals are now only shadows of what they used to be. The backgrounds, which used to be turquoise and cool, now resemble a burnt field. The vertical background pattern becomes more prominent, their endurance and decline, contingent on this external influence in their lives, like inclement weather; they become savage blooms, enduring and declining.

By increments, they lose their physical presence, as if they are becoming too weary to keep showing themselves; they withdraw into the background. In the end, their centres disappear again, but they seem lighter, freer; as their lives draw to a close, they fade away, selflessly, letting themselves go; they decline and disintegrate. What happens when these flowers disintegrate, and lose their determined presence, in this fallen reality, and take their place behind that veil in the background?