Overview

TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is a monumental three-panel folding screen in which beauty, force and philosophy exist in quiet balance. On its blue face, the work considers the outward life: presence, bearing, composure and the way we move through the world. On its black reverse, traced with fluorescence, it turns inward towards instinct, reflection, silence and the unseen architecture of the self. Across both sides, three horses form a meditation on time. They are named Memory, Presence and Becoming: the past, the present and the future.

This is not simply a painted screen, but a threshold object: one that divides space while deepening it. Through overpainting, the earlier work is neither erased nor concealed. It remains beneath the surface, absorbed into a new order of form and meaning. In that sense, TRIGA CAERULEUS CC stands not only as an image, but as a presence: a work of poise, feminine intelligence, formal authority and inward command.

#063 TRIGA CAERULEUS CC, 2026

Acrylic, oilstick & mixed media on an overpainted

Transforming pre-existing double-sided screen structure

The Within and the Without

Three-panel folding screen / room divider
Overall dimensions:                  88 x 202 x 11 cm
Front painted area:       182 x 85 cm each panel
Rear painted area: 181.5 x 84.5 cm each panel

Critical Narrative - Part 1

There are works that furnish a room, and there are works that alter the atmosphere of a room simply by standing within it. TRIGA CAERULEUS CC belongs to the latter. It does not decorate space; it claims it. It does not merely accompany its surroundings; it quietly reorganises them. More than an object, it is a presence.

As a three-panel folding screen, it carries an ancient function: it divides, conceals, stages, protects and frames. Here, that practical role becomes something more exacting. The work stands not only between one part of a room and another, but between one state of being and another: between what is shown and what is withheld, between the outwardly composed self and the inwardly governed self.

Its frontal side opens in blue, not as decoration, but as atmosphere, depth and emotional charge. It feels both expansive and containing: luminous, yet weight-bearing. Across this layered field, three horses emerge, placed left, centre and right. They do not appear as illustrations, but as forms discovered through revision, gesture, memory and accumulation. They rise from within the painting rather than sit upon it. That distinction gives the work conviction. One senses not a designed image, but an earned one.

This frontal face is the without: the visible life, the self in relation to the world, the realm of bearing, movement, beauty and cultivated presence. Yet the outward is never treated as superficial. The surface is layered because the outward life is layered. Its motifs are multiple because identity itself is never singular. What appears composed has usually been shaped by experience, restraint, resilience and inward labour. This is not prettiness. It is poise.

In its tone and bearing, the work is unmistakably feminine, though never in a weak or ornamental sense. It understands feminine strength as composure without passivity, softness without surrender, beauty without fragility, and independence without the loss of grace. It honours a form of womanhood that is spirited, lucid, inwardly governed and self-possessed. It has no need of theatrical declaration.

There is also a sense of inheritance, as though refinement, courage and sensibility had found visible form. The work flatters not through sentiment, but through recognition. It suggests that elegance and force may coexist; that beauty may be thoughtful; and that inward clarity is itself a form of distinction.

Critical Narrative - Part 11

Turn the work, however, and its argument becomes more exacting.

The reverse, the within, is black: restrained, resonant and disciplined, activated by fluorescence. Here the horses remain, but they are transformed. On the blue side they move through emotional weather; on the black side they become closer to thought, instinct and memory, as though drawn by the interior life itself. The black is not emptiness, nor a simple symbol of darkness. It is depth. It is the chamber of inwardness, where the noise of the visible world recedes and what is essential becomes easier to hear.

The fluorescent contours are among the work's quietest achievements. They do not disrupt the darkness; they animate it. They behave like afterimages, like hidden structures of feeling made briefly visible, like a private luminosity reserved for those willing to look more closely. The reverse does not seek to dazzle as the frontal side does. Instead, it gathers attention inward. It creates hush. It invites stillness. It makes silence feel articulate.

Across both sides, the three horses establish the governing order of the piece: the left horse, Memory, turns towards the past; the centre horse, Presence, meets the present; and the right horse, Becoming, inclines towards the future. Yet the work is too resolved to collapse into mere symbolism. Its true subject is not simply time, but how time is inhabited.

The past is acknowledged, but not enthroned. It may be honoured, but not inhabited.

The future is welcomed, but not grasped. It may be imagined, but not possessed.

The present alone stands before us with authority.

This is why the central horse is the fulcrum of the work. Facing the viewer, it becomes more than a marker of the present; it becomes an invitation to presence itself. It draws the eye, and the mind, back to the only place in which life can be lived: this breath, this hour, this act of perception, this moment of being alive. In a culture so often divided between memory, anticipation and distraction, that is no small proposition. It is a quiet one, but a profound one.

There is another intelligence within the work: its material history. TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is not painted upon a neutral support made for the occasion. It is built through overpainting, transforming an earlier painted screen while allowing traces of its previous life to remain beneath the surface. The earlier image is neither erased nor denied, but absorbed into a new order of meaning. What stands here is therefore not only an image, but a record of succession: one surface giving way to another, one visual history becoming part of a more singular whole.

This is where the work begins to gather its seriousness.

Too often, large works are assumed to be important merely because they are large. This one escapes that error. Its scale is earned. Its intensity is earned. Its stillness is earned. It is not loud, but commanding. Not ostentatious, but unmistakable. It carries the authority of something genuinely believed in. The labour is visible. The symbolism is alive rather than imposed. The surfaces have been risked. The image has been fought for. That is where real value begins: not simply in singularity, though the work is singular; not simply in scale, though it is monumental; but in conviction.

TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is therefore not a statement piece in the empty sense. It is a work of alignment. To live with it is to live beside a proposition: that beauty may carry thought, that femininity may carry command, that the inward life deserves form, and that the present moment, precisely because it is fleeting, remains the site of our greatest sovereignty.

As one of a pair, it stands in dialogue with its red counterpart, TRIGA COCCINEUS CC, yet remains complete in itself. If its companion speaks in another register of energy, this blue work is the more contemplative voice: poised, lucid, atmospheric and firm. It does not clamour for admiration, which is precisely why it receives it.

Artist's Reflection

TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is a meditation on feminine strength, inward stillness and the discipline of presence. It considers the visible and invisible parts of a life: what the world receives, and what the self must quietly govern. Through the recurring image of the horse, and the passage of past, present and future, the work becomes not only an object of form, but an invitation: to honour memory without submitting to it, to welcome tomorrow without fearing it, and to meet today with clarity, grace and force.

Critique

TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is a work about duality, but it does not labour the point. Its structure carries the idea naturally. As a three-panel screen, it already proposes two conditions: what faces outward and what turns inward; what is shown and what is held back. Sturrock uses that format with restraint. He does not overcomplicate it. He lets the object itself do part of the work.

On the blue front, the painting is layered, atmospheric and open enough to breathe. The horses are present, but not overdefined. That restraint matters. They feel discovered rather than illustrated, which gives the surface more life. The blue does not act as decoration; it creates depth and pressure. It has enough movement to hold the eye, while the white line keeps the forms present without forcing them into certainty.

The three horses read as a sequence: Memory, turned towards the past; Presence, facing the present; and Becoming, inclining towards the future. It is a clear structure, but the work avoids becoming merely symbolic. What gives it weight is not the idea alone, but the way the paint supports it. The central horse is the key. It steadies the whole piece and returns the viewer to the present moment, where the work is at its strongest.

The reverse is simpler, and stronger for that simplicity. The black panels reduce the language of the piece to line, contrast and control. After the layered blue front, this feels disciplined rather than spare. The horses become more direct, but not less charged. The black does not read as emptiness. It reads as inwardness: a quieter register in which the work becomes less atmospheric and more exact.

The fluorescent layer adds another dimension, but it does not feel like an afterthought. Under UV light, the reverse shifts in character: the outer horses illuminate in turquoise, while the central horse burns in pink. The effect is vivid, but it fits the logic of the work. What is hidden is not inactive; it simply waits for a different condition in which to be seen.

There is also intelligence in the way Sturrock approaches the horse itself. He does not sentimentalise it, nor use it as a decorative shorthand for elegance or status. The animals retain their distance, force and sensitivity. For anyone who knows horses, that matters. These are not empty emblems. They remain creatures with presence.

The overpainted structure strengthens the work. It carries a prior surface beneath the present one, giving the piece resistance and history. That matters in a work concerned with time, memory and renewal. The image does not arrive on a blank support with false innocence; it comes through revision, which gives it credibility.

What makes TRIGA CAERULEUS CC convincing is its restraint. It has a clear visual and philosophical structure, but it does not overstate itself. The front offers atmosphere and presence. The reverse offers control and inwardness. Together, they form a work that feels considered, distinct and fully resolved in its own terms.

Its seriousness has been earned.

(JMS)