RESEARCH PRACTICE
'Science moon'. Watercolour, gouache and ink. On A2 Jet black 150g Canford paper . Copyright DC 2025
2.7.25. 20;30hrs .The first quarter moon cycle.
To continue the work with black card, watercolours and luminous paint.
I have been looking at NASA Apollo ‘Luminary’ mission software from the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) installed in the early Lunar missions: with names such as ‘Retread, Aurora, Sunburst, and Sundance’.1.
The mathematical equations and software titles seem to me reminiscent of a bygone age. A mathematical ‘memory,’ of the lunar missions. A reflection of the 1960s and 1970s cultural drives. The ‘Space Race,’ spurred on by the Cold war and the urgency to develop ballistic missiles.
This is the scientific moon.
I see this piece as experimentally thinking through how surfaces and cultures change over time. Through the process of making, I wanted to explore the monochromatic interplay of paint, with imagery that mainly concerned itself and allows itself to be interpreted as surface structure. A reflection of ‘arrangement’ and ‘goal-oriented formulaic drives’.
I have however intentionally ‘left some room’ in the image for speculative readings. Imagining, as I painted the work, the mathematically trained future spectator endeavouring to read the formula and to appraise the piece . To “work it out,” from an empirical frame, leaving an imaginary residue in my thoughts as I painted of ‘order and form’.
I also see dissipation in the finished work. A dissolving of forms and yet also a composition narrative.
Even the word ‘Soluble’ has an origin story.
Late Latin – solvere
Late Latin – solubilis
Old French and English ‘solve’ eventually coalescing their linguistic, historical and cultural journey in Late middle English language as “soluble.”2.
Occupied in the fading light with painting a lunar form above and beyond: formed upon previously applied and complex formula and yet still open to creative surprise.
I have the ghosts of the past and future looking over my shoulder and emerging in the work itself.
Observing the surface closely as I worked in the washes of white paint over the mathematical ‘formula,’ the card bevelling with the considerable amount of water applied.
An absorption of fluid that transforms the materials properties.
A contortion of a surface, analogous to the moons gravitational pull bulging the waters of the earth.
References
1. https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Luminary.html#gsc.tab=0
2. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
26.6.25. ’Dark Moon’. David Crawford.
“Hidden in the labyrinth of the Alphabet is my sacred name, the SIGIL of all things unknown”.1.
‘11:31 hrs’. Collage on ‘A2’ Jet black 150g Canford paper (Original now burnt). Copyright DC 2025.
I start with templates at 11:31hrs GMT on 25.6.25.
The ‘Dark Moon’.
Slowly fading from sight into dimness.
Into the speculative.
The intuitive practice of making without visual anchors.
The nocturnal firmament where the internal incarnation of the ‘dark moon’ guides the making.
The selenocentric orbit is but a partial perspective.
The circle shapes the energy.
‘Dark moon’. Watercolour, gouache and ink. Watercolour, gouache and ink.
On A2 Jet black 150g Canford paper (Original now burnt). Copyright DC 2025.
‘Triplicity Cosmos’. Watercolour, gouache and ink. On A2 Jet black 150g Canford paper (Original now burnt). Copyright DC 2025.
Here is my circular sacred space.
This is my container.
Mark making with watercolours, ink and gouache on black ground.
The brush as athame.
An occluded evolution.
Documenting the process with an iPhone, the flash intimates the celestial sphere within the image.
I keep all the photos as deceptive ‘immortality objects’. However, the images essentially chart transience.
Our shared quickening towards the soil.
This is notional method. I leave the work outdoors overnight. To be shaped by the rain. The water that purges the triple-bodied imagery. Hekate’s triplicity is transformed by the 9000K overcast daylight.
I ritually document again on my iPhone.
‘All that remains’. Watercolour, gouache and ink. A2 Jet black 150g Canford paper (Original now burnt). Copyright DC 2025.
A ‘digital/human gestalt’ now replaces and supplants the previous ways of looking and knowing.
A cosmos that is already starting to decay and erode through 21st century metrological progression.
‘Conflagration'. Digital image (Unprinted at 26.6.25). Copyright DC 2025.
I want to manifest all the elements, so I burn the remnants.
I have a hard drive that has multiple circular framed architecture. I add this to the pyre. Not only as a destructive impulse : but also to signal futile negation and affection for nihilistic symmetry.
‘HD symmetry’. Digital image (Unprinted at 26.6.25).
Copyright DC 2025.
'Votive circle in daylight. Study 1'. Digital image (Unprinted at 26.6.25).
Copyright DC 2025.
Staying with the exploration of the circle and its boundaries. Its borders are permeable and ever shifting, moving outwards into elusive domains.
‘Votive circle. Study 2'. Digital image (Unprinted at 26.6.25) Copyright DC 2025.
All containers become ‘dust altars.’
Votive offerings that propel and imply clandestine cyclical trajectories.