The image of the moth is recurrent in this new exhibition of Ned Elliott’s work. It’s one example of a fascination with the ephemeral, fragile nature of existence that has long captivated him. In his depictions, moths, flowers, feathers, and cosmic beams take centre stage, ridding the pictureplane of anthropocentrism, and reminding the viewer of the greater architecture of the world. Drawn at huge scales, as in The Voyage over Strange Seas, these subjects and their worlds become tangible, tragic, and comprehensible.
There is a similar fresh reflection in Ned’s work with feathers. He writes: “My influence is nature, and sometimes it comes in surprising ways. For instance a pigeon feather on the road – I looked at it for a few days and eventually brought it in and started drawing it. It is so beautiful! What a subtlety it has, even with only its different grades of grey, white, and black. These are little clues to a life of not only a single creature but also a much larger world working away alongside our own.”
This direction provides the link with Ned’s larger works depicting cosmic events – like The Glutinous Mass That Declares Itself To Be The World, and Was It The Work Of Nature Or Of Art? These are imaginings of the enormous forces and transcendent architecture of the world of the Big Bang. In Where Did That Come From?, we see the crazed trail of a particle skittering through a supernova, suffused with the pastel powder puff patterns of colour that are a recurrent feature in Ned’s work. There is something deeply involving in Ned’s use of the line, whether as ribbon or wild flightpath, always going somewhere new.