In The Beginning

In The Beginning is a tall painting, about twice as high as it is wide, and it reads from top to bottom like a sequence.

At the top, a face forms out of swirling strokes of deep blue, teal and green, with flecks of yellow and orange. It has two eyes, each a small spiral, and no clear outline. Above it, in the swirl, sits a small white triangle containing three red marks arranged in a curve, almost a tiny face of its own, or a sign. It is the only flat, symbolic element in the painting, and it is easy to miss.

Below the face, the composition opens into a mouth. Red gums and a full row of upper teeth arch across the canvas. Inside the mouth, instead of a tongue or a throat, there is a large orange-gold disc painted in swirling strokes like the surface of a sun, with a red ring around a black hole at its centre. Look closely at the lower edge of that black hole: there is a tiny pale-blue form sitting just inside it, a speck that could be a small eye, a planet, or a drop of light about to fall out.

Below the sun, a pale moon-like disc rests on the lower teeth, as though the mouth is holding it in its bite.

Then the picture turns into a spiral. Bands of red and orange sweep in from the left edge, like the fiery streak that also crosses the upper left, and curl down into a whirlpool in the lower half. At its centre is the Earth, painted with surprising realism, its continents and cloud cover clearly visible. The red bands circle it like the arms of a galaxy.

Across the dark areas the background is scattered with white flecks of stars, larger and more irregular than a simple spatter.

The title places all this at the start of things, and the sequence can be read in either direction. A cosmic face speaks, or exhales, and the sun, the moon and finally the Earth come out of it. Or the reverse: the Earth is being drawn upward into the mouth. The painting gives both readings equal weight.