Flotsom and Lagan
Medium: Oil on Canvas (20”x16”)
Date: c. 2021
Project/Body of Work: Later integrated into Mayura Oracle deck
An oil painting of two figures seated at the edge of a vast body of water, facing a distant horizon where a city glows beneath an unsettled sky. The space between foreground and horizon is heavy with depth, the sky may be clearing or thickening. The image resists resolution.
Though initially derived from a historical photograph, the figures in this painting are no longer directly tied to that source. They function instead as internal presences, aspects of the self/Self positioned at the threshold between consciousness and the depths.
Process Notes:
This painting emerged during a period of art therapy and stands apart from my usual working methods. It was completed quickly, in a single session, without concern for technical refinement.
The source photograph originally contained many figures and details of the city in question. As I began painting, those elements dissolved. What remained was the horizon, the water, and two figures who shifted from random members of a crowd into something archetypal.
The image operates at the level of sub-memory, not a direct recollection of events, but the sensation of something recognized before it can be named.
The title, Flotsam and Lagan, refers to maritime terms describing types of wreckage released from a sunken ship. During this period, I was working with imagery of a submerged vessel suspended between ocean floor and surface, a metaphor for a life or history held mostly beneath awareness. What rises from such depths is fragmented and often feels random at the surface level.
Years later, the image entered the Mayura Oracle deck as a representation of the voice from the depths, the presence that bridges the unknown and the largely unknowable.
Nearby Coordinates
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