Overview

TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is a monumental three-panel folding screen in which beauty, force and philosophy are held in rare equilibrium. On its blue frontal face, the work addresses the outward life, bearing, visibility, composure and the theatre of human presence. On its black reverse, traced with fluorescence, it turns inward toward instinct, reflection, silence and the unseen architecture of the self. Across both sides, three horses embody the eternal triad of time: the past, the present and the future.



This is not merely a painted screen, but a threshold object: one that divides space while deepening it. Through overpainting, a pre-existing painted structure is not simply covered, but re-authored, absorbed into a more singular order of form and meaning. In that sense, TRIGA CAERULEUS CC stands not only as image, but as presence: a work of unusual 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 psychic weather of a room merely by standing within it. TRIGA CAERULEUS CC belongs decisively to the latter. It does not decorate space; it claims it. It does not accompany its surroundings; it quietly reorganises them. More than an object, it is a presence. More than an image, it is a condition.

As a three-panel folding screen, it carries an ancient and suggestive function: it divides, conceals, stages, protects and frames. Here, however, that practical role is transformed into 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, between the visible theatre of life and the quieter province in which significance is actually formed.

Its frontal side opens in blue, not decorative blue, nor merely beautiful blue, but a blue of atmosphere, depth and emotional voltage. It possesses that rare capacity to feel both expansive and containing at once: luminous, yet weight-bearing. Across this layered field emerge the three horses, placed left, centre and right. They do not appear as illustrations in any ordinary sense, but as forms discovered through revision, gesture, memory and accumulation. They rise from within the painting rather than sit neatly upon it. That distinction matters. It 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 what is compelling is that the outward is never treated as superficial. The work resists that simplification. Its surface is layered because the outward life is layered. Its motifs are multiple because identity itself is never singular. Its atmosphere is rich because what appears composed has usually been shaped by experience, restraint, resilience and inward labour. This is not prettiness. It is poise.

In its tonality and bearing, the work is unmistakably feminine, though never in any weak or ornamental sense. It understands feminine strength as something more exacting and more distinguished: composure without passivity, softness without surrender, beauty without fragility, independence without forfeiting grace. It honours a form of womanhood that is spirited, lucid, inwardly governed and self-possessed. It has no need of theatrical declarations. It understands that the finest strength is often the least performative.

There is, too, an atmosphere here of generational intelligence, as though refinement, courage and sensibility had been given visible form. The work flatters not through sentiment, but through recognition. It suggests that elegance and force may coexist; that beauty may be thoughtful; 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, inscriptions made by the interior life itself. The black is not emptiness, nor any crude signal of darkness. It is depth. It is the chamber of inwardness. It is the place in which the noise of the visible world recedes sufficiently for one to hear what is essential.

The fluorescent contours are especially intelligent. They do not disrupt the darkness; they animate it. They behave like afterimages, like hidden structures of feeling suddenly made perceptible, like a private luminosity reserved for those capable of stillness. This is one of the work’s finest achievements. The reverse does not attempt to dazzle in the way the frontal side arrests. Instead, it gathers attention inward. It creates hush. It invites concentration. It makes silence feel articulate.

Across both sides, the three horses establish the governing order of the piece: the left horse turned toward the past, the centre horse meeting the present, the right horse inclining toward the future. Yet the work is too resolved to collapse into mere symbolism. Its true subject is not simply time, but the right habitation of time.

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 well, but not possessed.
The present alone stands before us with authority.

This is why the central horse is the fulcrum of the entire work. Facing the viewer, it becomes more than the marker of now; it becomes a demand for presence. It calls the eye and the mind back to the only place in which life may actually be lived: this breath, this hour, this act of perception, this felt fact of being alive. In a culture so often dispersed into memory, anticipation and distraction, that is no small proposition. It is a noble one.

There is another intelligence in the work: its material history. TRIGA CAERULEUS CC is not painted upon a neutral support fabricated for the occasion. It is built through overpainting: a transformed pre-existing painted screen carrying forward traces of an earlier visual life while asserting a wholly renewed identity. The prior image is not simply concealed, but absorbed into a fresh order of meaning. This lends the work an added charge. What stands here is not only image, but succession, one surface overtaken by another, one visual history giving way to a more singular authorship. Transformation, when undertaken with authority, becomes a declaration of seriousness in its own right.

One may hear, quietly, echoes of older disciplines of thought. The Greeks understood harmony, measure and the relation between outer form and inward order. The Romans understood bearing, composure and the dignity of self-command. TRIGA CAERULEUS CC does not quote antiquity, nor borrow prestige from it. Rather, it participates in an older wisdom: that beauty and inward discipline need not be opposed; that the finest exterior is not vanity, but expression; that calm is not passivity, but command of the self.

This is what gives the work 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 size, 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, 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, but 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, past, present and future, the work becomes not only an object of form, but a reminder: 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 well. 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 there, but they are not overdefined. That restraint helps. 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 variation and 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: one turned toward the past, one facing the present, and one inclining toward 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, which is 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 importantly 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 also fits the logic of the work. What is hidden is not inactive; it simply waits for a different condition in which to be seen. That is a strong idea, and here it is handled with control.

There is also a degree of intelligence in the way Sturrock approaches the horse itself. He does not sentimentalise it, and he does not use it as a decorative shorthand for elegance or wealth. The animals retain their distance, their force and their sensitivity. For anyone who knows horses well, that matters. These are not empty emblems. They still feel like creatures with presence.

The overpainted structure also helps the work. It carries a prior surface beneath the present one, which gives the piece more resistance and history. That is appropriate in a work concerned with time, memory and renewal. The image does not appear on a blank support with false innocence; it arrives through revision, which gives it more 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.

It is a serious piece, and it earns that seriousness.

(JMS)