Between heaven and earth

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Sometimes a picture conceived in one context assumes an unexpected meaning in another, as when an author finds his own particular imagery reflected in the painted surface.

    ‘ Come with me,’ says the old man at last. He helps Kit to his feet and leads him to the other parapet, where he points far upstream. ‘Look over there.’

    Kit follows the line of his arm and sees that the river below them emerges from a delta where seven other rivers have come together. They could, he thinks, be described as lesser rivers; yet each is so mighty in its own right that the word is inappropriate. They seem at once to flow down from the sky and break from beneath the earth, rushing vigorously, glinting in the sun..

    ‘These are the rivers,’ says Kit’s great-grandfather, ‘that flow between heaven and earth, and between earth and heaven.’

    ‘Where do they begin?’ Kit asks.

    ‘They begin at the fountain of life, and they end in the ocean of eternity; but the fountain is never exhausted, and the ocean is never full. And when they reach that delta, they mingle with each other and with springs you cannot see to form the river of life, encompassing everything men know and imagine and what they have yet to imagine. In its waters are mingled past and present and future, actuality and possibility.’

Extract from Anthony Gardner's new book 'The Rivers of Heaven', published this month. Find on Amazon

Return to Paris

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Returning to Paris, to show my work there for the first time in a decade, is a way of also returning to other times and places.

The ten paintings, made in the last five years, not only illuminate particular journeys (to North Africa, Tibet and Central America) but also reveal a recurring impulse, to excavate the ‘geographical unconscious’ and explore the many layers of history buried beneath the surface matter of these places. Brought together in one place, and viewed at a certain physical and emotional distance (that is, away from the self and the studio, in another space and another city), the paintings display a kind of circular narrative, about the life that feeds the painting that feeds the life to come.

Luke Elwes, Peintures récentes. Galerie hotel Le Marceau-Bastille, Paris. 30 April – 30 September 2009