Human Rights Works
Judy’s Human Rights paintings are arrived at through the process of ‘Metamorphosis’. Figurative images (usually abstract) emerge during the natural mark making process, particularly while painting dark shadows or objects - i.e. the huge basalt rocks of Cornwall or South West Victoria. This process is completely spontaneous and not contrived. The metamorphosis dictates the narrative.
Requiem
c.1998
Today is my birthday and your death day. I watch the rocks turning orange – yellow ochre washed with cadmium red – but the red is in contrast to the aqua water – pulling your innocence along with the tide. The eleventh wave arrives and has the power to dislodge the strong boulders and wash the blood over the beautiful bodies of youth. Today is my birthday – let me give something of it to you. The tears of your family are global and they make a new ‘Sea of Change’
The Black Madonna
c.1999
This series is dedicated to the memory of Bede Griffiths who believed that in order to find true enlightenment one must experience the dark side of nature – ‘The Black Madonna’. We also each have our own personal ‘black madonnas’ – both mental and physical to face, accept and cope with at various points throughout our lives. Each time we survive one of these attacks from the ‘Black Madonna’ we are rewarded with strengths hitherto unimagined.
Xenophobia
c.2004
Xenophobia – the fear of losing out to the unknown stranger. This word’s and its meaning could be the catalyst for all war. The human condition to conquer has found us sitting on the top branch of the evolutionary tree but unfortunately we also possess this other condition to covert rather than share all that we have conquered.
War and Peace
c.2003
WAR — War and Peace was painted during the most violent phase of the war in Iraq. The use of the colour red and the dismembered body parts (metamorphosis of basalt rocks) represents the carnage of war while the water spilling in wildly over the rocks flows into a huge teardrop of sorrow.
PEACE — This section of the series was painted in Autumn, our calmest season in SW Victoria. The wild sea flows down to a blue satin blanket of peace. However the peace is interrupted by the unexpected explosions in the sky (see Peace – coming) or the eerie stillness of the sentinel rocks (Peace ii).