The starting points for the Spartacus series of paintings include Aram Khachaturian’s ballet ‘Spartacus’ and the 1960 Stanley Kubrick epic film of the same name. Originally drawn to the film by the memory of watching it when I was twelve years old. I attempted to recreate a world transforming the greed, hate and violence into auras of luminous colour - reminiscent of stained-glass - to reflect the deeper emotion and uniqueness of each figure as shown in my ‘Caesar’ portrait. The layers within each historical character transform the individual’s internal pain to investigate ‘the triumph of the spirit over oppression’ and visually represent it with colours and textures.

Led originally through my meditation practice and reading of Kandinsky’s ‘The Spiritual in Art’ (date to come) I participated in new age sensing auras workshops to be able to compare aura photography and the colours from sensing auras. At this time I studied the aura studies and illustrations by Charles Leadbeater. It opened doors towards the transformation of shapes and a new way of seeing and viewing colour. The completed paintings suggest how someone’s energy manifests in colours, patterns and shapes which I have reworked into the features of the face. 

I consider my own visual childhood imagination alongside research into the coloured emanations around people captured with a high-tech bio feedback imaging camera that takes a photo of your dynamic electro magnetic field.