Tom Jean Webb
60 x 48 in.
Further images
My home, my hell, my heaven is one of the two largest paintings featured in Webb’s solo exhibition A Bark to Blossom. This vibrant mixed media painting - using glitter as well as acrylic paint, oil paint and oil bar - depicts an abundance of life, vying for space within the constraints of the canvas. Front and centre in this cacophony of wildlife is an exotically coloured butterfly, it’s form and colouring somewhat echoed by the trumpet-like blossom in the top left of the composition. In this way - following the flow or the flora and fauna - our eyes navigate the painting discovering more and more layers as we go. Swaying grasses, twisted blue and green vines, bursting psychedelic blossoms, until finally our gaze alights upon the clawed talon of a predatory bird reaching towards the butterfly from the top of the painting. This violence should feel incongruous, a threat to the delicate wings it reaches for, and yet it sits as part of the symphony of life. Even as we watch, it slips in and out of focus within the jungle of life, it’s fine swirls of paint an echo of the leaves and plants all around it, just another part of the greater whole.