Tribute To 9/11

This is a commission by a musician who asked if I would do a painting of his music composition played by cello, violin and viola.

The painting tells this story… Top left -quiet normal day for everyone in the plane and city. Moving right to the clashing colours of aqua and red shapes are indicative of anxiety and confusion in the plane as people realise something is wrong.  The top part relates to the plane, therefore the aeriform shapes.)

The middle part is the chaotic crashes, the fragmentation of the buildings and shock in the city and across the world– The small web shapes on the left hand side are  relating to this statement by Mary Baker Eddy “The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle.

The black sharp pointy shapes are literally the broken windows , but metaphysically, they symbolise the sharp realisation of what has happened but also the harshness of heart of the perpetrators. These shapes are also feelings of emptiness and shock and the “sharp consequences of moral blindness”.

The long pointy yellow, orange, red and white shapes symbolise attack.

The shape with the checked “floor” (centre left) and the 3 pointed shapes going towards the light area are symbolising the people who have died but now going into the Infinite Light, no longer disturbed by the chaos.

The jagged black shapes (middle far RIGHT) are actually visual representations of the jagged, urgent, dark sounds of the the cello.  The curved line of black pointing shapes symbolises the confused stream of negative inner chatter of the attackers.  This is also visual representation of the cello sounds.

Bottom area on the left:  thin white lines and dots…these are like the “white noise” of disbelief, the silence (except for the sirens). The transparent half circles (above the white lines bottom left) are the feeling of stunned emptiness. Circles are normally symbolic of completeness but here we have un-closed circles symbolising the people’s feeling that the city is now incomplete after the event.

Bottom Centre: The drifting transparent shapes also symbolise transition of people's thoughts to awareness. The dots are the feeling of time stopping and starting. Trying to “join the dots” to understand the bigger picture. The intermittent lines also are like the long and short sounds of the violins contrasting here.

Bottom right: These shapes are obviously the space left when the towers fell…but really it is reminding us that nothing is really lost as the IDEA that the building represented is always here. The crown is a reference to where Mary Baker Eddy writes “Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. I am mentally putting the crown of Love around every child, man, and woman on the planet.”