Troy Ruffels

Consider the landscapes of earth, concrete, water, steel, glass and sky that surround us in this urban world; consider the transient and ephemeral aspects of nature, which manifest in this habitat in a myriad of forms.  It is within these reflected worlds surrounding me that I feel a sense of wonderment.

For the greater part, I focus on mirrors of nature in these environments where tiny details hang suspended in a reflected universe; signs of nature are everywhere, twisting and warping over pools of water collected in gutters, or the metallic surfaces of car bonnets.   These are the fleeting glimpses of the passer by, they accumulate over time to define a sense of place.  Always visible, yet often unnoticed, the perpetual struggle of life to break through and come into being.

It is within this transitory world of the everyday that my work is based, within my experiences as an active participant in this environment.  I consider the commonplace a world filled with poetry, and it exists right where I stand, beneath my feet, swirling around me.  Elements are extracted in an attempt to magnify the tiny and often unnoticed details of everyday life.  Most of the images are caught as they pass across reflective surfaces; a car bonnet, windscreen, swimming pool, or hard wet concrete, existing only momentarily, before slipping away under changing light.

The reflection is also a personally meaningful motif in the work.  It reminds me of the possibility that another world exists other than the one we are able to subject to rationale analysis.  It gives rise to the possibility that there is always an alternative pathway we may travel in life – another level of appreciation, understanding and communicating with the world we inhabit – other than the one which is being sold to us as being real, and subsequently finite.

I paint from these tiny worlds, where raindrops like the pulse beats of life send shimmers of light rippling to the edge of a pool, stirring trees to dance in inverted skies.  It is in this murmur of light, the falling leaf, branch, pool where silence dissolves, that my attention is drawn.  I pause as I watch the spiralling undulations of leaves twisting and warping in mirrored worlds below my feet.

Troy Ruffels
Devonport, June 2005

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