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"bauhaus man", archival digital print,
image size 34 X 26 cm, edition of 12.

There is a story attached to this print it is part of the "Grappling with Gropius" exhibition. If Leonardo da Vinci was in the Bauhaus what would his famous "Vitruvian Man" drawing look like, if he was in his doteage and not in his prime what would it look like, these were the two thoughts going through my mind at the time of making this print.

It did not help that I was in the initial stages of cancer when I was doing the thinking.

The text has the attributes given to the colours and shapes and the main text reads;

The measurements of the human body are distributed by Nature as follows that is that 4 fingers make 1 palm, and 4 palms make 1 foot, 6 palms make 1 cubit; 4 cubits make a man's height. And 4 cubits make one pace and 24 palms make a man; and these measures he used in his buildings. If you open your legs so much as to decrease your height 1/14 and spread and raise your arms till your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head you must know that the centre of the outspread limbs will be in the navel and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle.

The universal and timeless shapes found in geometry, the circle, square and triangle like colour are the fundamental systems underlying visible reality. Yellow is terrestrial whose violence can be painful and aggressive. The blue is celestial evoking a deep calm. Red is warmth, very living, lively and agitated, immense force, a movement in oneself. The angle formed by the angular line possesses as well an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (circle) and similar to red for a right angle (square).

The line wanders, the curve distends, the spine bends, bones shrink, veins pop out, flesh sags, shapes alter, colours fade. Those certainties we hold become weaker and uncertain, the passions colour, the stable moves and the dynamic weakens. The universal and the timeless release their forms and meanings, all we are left with is change.

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