Rebbelib were navigational charts created by the sea-farers of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia. They are essentially abstract descriptions, in sticks and found objects, of the spatial relationships between islands, ocean currents and wave patterns. Each chart is particular to its creator and as they were never actually taken to sea they are, in essence, mnemonic devices.

I use rebbelib to navigate my space, or more specifically to resolve ideas of 3-dimensional space onto an essentially 2-dimensional plane. R-9 and R-11 depict wave sequences refracted around an island. These are snapshots, from differing perspectives, of dynamic phenomena, and combine both the observed and the imagined.

R-8 and R-12, on the other hand, represent the gravitational and erosional forces that imperceptibly split and relocate the granite exposures that form the landscape of Cornwall’s spine. Others allude to field systems or geological strata with the pathways and other vectors that transect them.

The grids, lattices, blocks and other geometric forms represented in these rebbelib re-occur in my paintings.