I love playing with shapes – and now, in this purple period of my artistic life, my shapes are set against this chosen colour.

To be honest, I did not know that the shapes I was imagining and cutting and placing on the table would end up as identifiable ‘I’s. But that’s what happened. How does any written language begin? These matters go to the heart of our human capacity.

And being human, we can play with sounds. ‘I’s become Eyes, at the touch of a mischievous button. Or are they ‘T’s locked into a wooden base? Or dumb-bells lying on their side?

That’s the beauty and mystery of art. It is open to interpretation.

Quakers also treasure being open to nuance. Matters are not necessarily fixed.

The American Quaker, Gray Cox, wrote in his Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Bearing Witness – Quaker Process and a Culture of Peace (1985):

…Quakers view truth as something that happens, it occurs…Truth is not a dead fact which is known: It is a living occurrence in which we participate… The guiding concern of people bearing witness is to live rightly, in ways that are exemplary. Insofar as they have an end they aim at, it is perhaps most helpful to think of it as the aim of cultivating their souls and converting others….. Quakers are convinced that genuine leadings all proceed from a common ground, spring from a unity which we seek and find…

My Purple Eyes piece measures 30.5” x 31.5”.