Paintings On Board: The Hohlraum Pāhoehoe Series

Hohlraum Pāhoehoe De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus Series: This series of work takes the idea of a collision of two particles inside the Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and extrapolates what the image would look like if a human could actually witness it in person.  This micro-explosion would create thousands of additional sub sub-atomic particles that would emanate outward and inward and in all directions from the point of impact.  In some depictions the instant that the particles hit each other is imagined and executed with over ten layers of silver paint glazes in variations of tonality and value, including a multitude of natural materials including volcanic pumice, and mica chips.  The works’ composition shifts according to how light refracts and reflects off of the surface adding a three dimensionality and depth to the surfaces.  In some of these works in the series the center of the wood panel was burned and scraped to create another feeling of depth and dimensionality.  The smale-scale mixed media works on board were inspired by the verse “On the Nature of Things” written around zero AD/BC.  These works embody the spirit of the poem’s central theme, that all of nature can and will be explained scientifically without reliance on the concept of a supreme being or diety.  On earth, our planet exists in relative perpetuity by its fixed rotation around the sun.  The magma in the earth is responsible for this dynamic relationship and expresses itself through seismic and volcanic activity.  All of the works in this series as do many MONDU paintings contain volcanic pumice which emanated from the core and manifested itself as Pāhoehoe, exemplified most majestically on and through formation of the Hawaiian Islands.  By going back to this elemental material and combining it with mica, sand, combustion, and other reflective elements, the works in this series take us back to the origin and creation of time itself.  Even if this concept is a figment of reality in the meme of our human zeitgeist, everyone can relate on a visceral and primitive level to the power and force of nature.  And everyone is a subject to time, subjected to time, and eventually must submit to time.

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