Flyer 2024

This motif of a ski jumper or ski 'flyer' has reoccured in the work several times since my friend Julian played me Werner Herzog's 1974 documentary film 'The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner' about twenty five years ago. It's about Walter Steiner, a famous ski jumper in the 70's who fitted his skiing around being a carpenter and carver. With a magical eerie sound track and angled shots of the jumper in slow motion so that Steiner appeared to be gliding above the tree line, I was mesmerised. At the time it became talismanic for me as a youngish painter, and Herzog's use of metaphorical imagery that romantically connected his woodcraft to a more cerebral art form, where he literally seems to be defying gravity and was in the process of of seemingly learning to fly, connected deeply with me in my quest to be an artist, while co-parenting three children and keeping down a pretty full time teaching job. At the moment this rich veined image has reared up again and is conjuring up a medium sized woodcut in the print studio and several small panel paintings. - TH

Panel paintings made on Tom's Albers Foundation Residency in Bethany, Connecticut.