"Sign of Life" February 2001. 975 x 600 mm, Acrylic+Plastered Masonite

This is a work about my recovery from that horrible addiction to codeine. Compared to the energetic yet frantic style of my earlier abstracts ('Alpha', 'Seething', 'Escaper', etc.), I wanted to start again with a sparse beginning. So as I painted this, I thought of how we are trying so hard these days to find signs of life on Mars and other planets and the genuine possibility that we may not! But in this textured work, the 'signs of life' are the deliberate scratches and marks underneath the seemingly lifeless colors and forms of this 'planet's' surface.