Claire Hooper

Hey Pete,
just finished a really tacky watercolour from a picture I found on this website 'miracles of Islam' it's a picture of a lula flower which has a marking that kind of sort of almost looks like the word Allah (written in Arabic) Really into this idea of signs "discovered' in nature -- accidents transformed into potent magical symbols - somewhere between ordinary metaphor and animism - photographed (often really badly) and distributed as political/religious 'proof' on the net. It's pathetic, in that it inpires pathos, the remoteness of the photographer and the event somehow adding validity, and it's Romantic by the same token. The symbol (which is a word not an image) appearing framed by an image, has insinuated itself into a web based economy of desire, for Christian head bangers this might seem like a mark of evil, for their Islamic counterparts a 'stigmata' a cause for hysterical jubilation. And for me a reason to use these excellent gold silver and bronze watercolours that are what my dad would call an abomination.
I will send you a scan asap.
xc