PROJECTS

HISTORY PROJECTS

ABSTRACT PAINTINGS

FAIRWEATHER TRANSFORMATIONS

SPECTRUM

STORM RESURRECTION (EXHIBITION)

VEILS

SPECTRUMFIGURES

THE SHIVA PAINTINGS

OVAL PAINTINGS

PASSAGES (EXHIBITION)

EMPATHY (EXHIBITION)

NAÏVE AND SENTIMENTAL PAINTINGS

NORTHERN SONG

PILGRIMAGE TO THE MODERN

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

THE AMBIENT SERIES

SURVEY EXHIBITIONS

PAINTING SERIES

DOUBLE GROUND PAINTINGS

EARLY WORKS

THE SHIVA PAINTINGS

Works 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  


Shiva IX, 2020 by John Young

Shiva IX, Autumn

Oil on Belgian linen

71.5 x 92 cm



Gustav Mahler, born Jewish and then converting to Christianity later in life, often started his Symphonies with an ending - life’s ending. The first movements are often a melody of funerary marches, as if these endings mark a time of beginnings for the living. In Judiasm, when a dear one passes, one sits for seven days in silence. This ritual is sitting shiva. In silence, the sitter attunes themselves to the passing of memories, of experiences, of meaning, of hope – like Mahler’s Adagiettos – and all the while, the passage of time heals. And so it is in the world, when those dear ones pass, as with the life and work of Colin McCahon, of Ian Fairweather or Hilma af Klint, or when we are tested by those life arresting events that stop life in its tracks; a flood, a fire, a plague. We then sit in patience, in shiva. That time in stillness is healing, almost unbeknownst to us, so that one day beauty and presence can return.