Walking With Joff (quadriptych)

Autumn’s prelude to winter. Psychic systems reflexively brace for hibernation. An irrational hibernation stirred by the looming weight of festive holidays. Inner resources feel thin on the ground as we tunnel toward the year’s end.

Walking With Joff is a gift from a dream — an expression for a companion state, a psychic echo quietly shaping perception from the margins. It’s a quasi-depressive state, not quite depression. Peeling back layers reveals a bedrock of chalk and unsettled sleep. Agitating this metaphysical substrate uncovers a personal archaeology.

1. Reflexion, 2. Undertow, 3. Companion, 4. Archaeology

Oil on board, each panel w80 × h80 × d1 cm

Concept, painting and audiovisual by Gaynor Perry

Walking With Joff: 1. Reflexion 

Walking With Joff: 2. Undertow

Walking With Joff: 3. Companion

Walking With Joff: Archaeology

A four-part meditation on psychic terrain and seasonal transition. Each panel excavates a layer of emotional geology: reflexive defence, submerged tension, spectral companionship, and personal archaeology.

The sound textures were created by harmonising with a playground gate I pass on my way to swim — one of the ways I stay balanced through the winter blues. 

 

These pieces emerged over the past few months as a form of self‑tending — a way of moving through winter’s emotional undertow. I work without judgement, following whatever mood, gesture, or texture wants to surface. My palette is deliberately limited to four colours — Warm Light Yellow, Warm Sepia, Neutral Tint, and Madder (Geranium) Lake — a range that gives me the tone and contrast I need while keeping the work close to the body’s own warmth and shadow. 

The natural world is my anchor: the tangled logic of hedgerows, the quiet geometry of trees, the organic patterns that soothe and steady me. As I paint, these external forms merge with my inner terrain, becoming metaphysical landscapes — places where subconscious weather, memory, and instinct coalesce into shape and colour.

Walking With Joff: 1. Reflexion, 2. Undertow, 3. Companion, 4. Archaeology