Scott Elk
Desire Lines - Adrian, Koala Riding an Ibis Eating a Hotdog, 2022
Charcoal and Oil on board
122cm x 186cm

I wanted this painting to feel like slipping into a dream, with reality starting to fragment and repeat in rhythmic visual distortions, morphing as it progresses from left to right.

Inspired by a real world meeting, and a graphic yellow t-shirt, this painting was started as a charcoal sketch during a life drawing session, and was then taken back to the studio where I kept working, manipulating the visuals to the will of the concept.

At the time of painting this, I was deeply under the influence of just having viewed the Colin Lanceley retrospective Earthly Delights; colour in that exhibition was the hero, and it allowed me to play in a bold way.

DETAIL:

Desire Lines

The majority of work produced in 2022 falls into my Desire Lines series of paintings, drawings, screenprints, and ceramics. The series is about relationship to place, connection to people, and the sometimes intoxicating, head-fucking connection of physical interaction.

A desire line, is a term often referred to in urban or transportation planning, as a path created as a consequence of human traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. It is the way taken by choice, by desire, and by necessity when following the heart. It is movement with intention.

In a real world practical application, the desire lines have the possibility to connect people resulting in events along a time line. I see people as these spinning vortexes of energy, in a positive sense like galaxies spinning and reaching out, and in contrast, negatively sucking everything towards themselves like black holes spinning. When two of these things collide, wondrous and unexpected things can happen; colours swirl, planets could be flung out of orbit, or set in a new orbit, momentarily or until the end of time. My interpretation of these desire lines is constantly searching to insert the human element of connection into fragmented, and abstracted forms.