Seeing the Millennium Dome for the first time besides the Thames you’d be forgiven for thinking it might be the part of some Alien invasion. Another millennium theme, the O2 Arena as it’s now called emerged to some controversy.
Sometimes the idea for a painting comes as a concept before the image is decided. Others it will be the visual stimulus that evokes the ideas. This painting developed through the latter process whilst on the Thames Clipper.
Speeding along the Thames
you circuit the Peninsula that is home to the dome. With the sun reflecting off its shiny surface it resembles an object from another world.
Etherial and white, it’s suspended over the Greenwich landscape. Held sail-like it dominates the area. Reminiscent of the rigging on a Pirate Ship of old or a giant Big Top.
Or a giant spider-like creature crouching by the Thames ready to pounce…
I think I’d run away if it was…
My work often features repetitive patterns and structures in engineering. This time it was the rigging. How something so apparently weak in itself can be groups with others to provide a strength and force to hold this dome up. I see a metaphor for working together and combining strength and resources. How does the saying go?
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
