Sensory Conflict

Conflict of the Senses (2006)

This painting was inspired by the efforts of a group of disabled dogs I witnessed being walked around Edinburgh city centre. They were variously affected, and it dawned on me that we are all in a similar situation at some point in our everyday lives. We must rely on our senses to tell us what is wrong, and how to correct the defect. But what if there is a conflict of interest in our senses and the solution becomess, blurred, equivocal? All hell breaks loose, and we have no clear direction to our lives. A cacophony of signals reverberate around our mind, cancelling here, amplifying there. We are left with nothing more than colourful splodges of cerebral confusion.