Christine Allman
Visual Artist

Obmutscence is one of those words which is now mainly forgotten but has a powerful meaning for me in the context of the paintings in this series. In the Collins English DictionaryCopyright © HarperCollins Publishers, the meaning is (ˌɒbmjuːˈtɛsəns ) a noun, archaic is 'persistent silence' Derived forms obmutescent (ˌobmuˈtescent) adjective. Word origin of 'obmutescence' C17: from Latin obmūtescere to become mute. To be continued...
Obmutescence I, oil on canvas, cm x cm
The pathos of cloth is at the heart of the painting Obmutescence 1 where now it’s precarious materiality can be a slow meditation on the impermanence of human presence but might also be a register of an unspoken disaster. In one work painted from a construction that looks like a refugee’s abandoned cupboard, what looks like an infant’s suit slumps over a rope, suspended over a pile of numbered tickets, as though chance and fate were all the same. Built up slowly from transparent glaze in just a few tones, the objects seem poised on the point of decay: the artist needed to bear witness to the remnants of a narrative, like an investigator at the scene of some recently forgotten violence whose only traces are shreds hung in the dimly-lit undergrowth.
Proffesor Krzysztof Fijalkowski
For the exhibition, The Invisible Sun Within Us

Obmutescence II, oil on canvas, cm x cm
