Flow States

Marie Jose Gallery is proud to present Flow States - a second solo exhibition by Lebanon-based British artist Tom Young. Created during a year marked by personal and national upheaval, the series reflect Young’s journey from forced exile during the recent war in Lebanon to an unexpected and moving return to his home and gallery in Beirut. These paintings are shaped by that experience, tracing a path through displacement, love, and re-rooting.

Young’s works capture the emotional texture of landscapes - rivers in the UK and Lebanon, the deep blue Mediterranean, and urban ruins overgrown with life. His ‘Figure-Ground Reversal’ technique - revealing forms by painting their surroundings - mirrors the philosophical and emotional reversals at play in his life and practice.
Influenced by Taoist thought, T.S. Eliot’s meditations on time, and the ancient wisdom of Lebanon’s cedar trees, his work balances movement with stillness and transcendence.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“That which offers no resistance, overcomes the hardest substances. That which offers no resistance can enter where there is no space.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 43

Painting is both a soothing escape, and a medium through which to transform emotion. Sometimes it flows easily, sometimes it’s a painful struggle. It’s the principle reason why I chose to be an artist. Or perhaps never ‘chose’ it as such? It’s a process which flows naturally.

The exhibition is, on one level, an autobiographical narrative: in the past year, since the previous exhibition ‘BE/Longing’ at Marie Jose Gallery in May 2024, I was displaced by war from my beloved home in Lebanon and separated from my now fiancée Rouba for a number of months. In the meantime I resettled in Stamford, England, and contributed to exhibitions in Paris and London, both in aid of Lebanese charities. When the war ended (or perhaps paused) unexpectedly, I returned to live in Lebanon and reopen my beautiful gallery in Gemmayzeh, Beirut; a miraculous experience which I could not have anticipated.

The astonishing recovery in Lebanon, and courage to respond positively to such trauma is evoked in the large painting ‘Blooming City’, as fresh spring flowers shoot over the ruins and Ottoman era facades, defying the concrete jungle which characterises much of contemporary Beirut. It’s a reworking of an older painting- layers of memory and time lie underneath the chaotic urban struggle. The series of paintings touches upon the places I have sought as safe havens in a time of instability- both the sublime beauty of Lebanon and the UK, from the flowing rivers Welland, Adonis and Qadisha, to the cold grey waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Wales to the deep blue Mediterranean. In an often unsettling time in the world, Mother Nature offers us solace and connection to Source.

‘At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.’ T.S. Eliot (Burnt Norton, The Four Quartets)

The expression of something which is always moving in a still image is presents a paradox: perhaps painting is itself akin to Eliot’s ‘Still Point’: some paintings depict flowing water in a literal sense (‘Between Two Rivers There’s a Sea’ triptych), and sometimes (in the ‘Invisible Cities’ diptych) evoke the feeling of flowing between places, expressing displacement and instability as the wet oil paint is smeared and blurred.

I’m aware that the ability to be displaced and have secure places to which to escape is a luxury not afforded to everyone. One painting ‘Ascension (Escape)’ depicting the azure waters of the Mediterranean beyond a smeared pile of concrete rubble is painted from a video sent to me by a friend in Gaza. For him, the sea is both a trap, and an escape from an unfathomable nightmare: a place of longing for freedom.

Up high on Mount Lebanon, magnificent Cedars, some of which are thousands of years old keep growing as witnesses of mankind’s changing fortunes and suffering: transcendent and wise. The Cedar of Lebanon is also a quintessential symbol of grand English country gardens: thereby, in my mind, uniting seemingly disparate lands. These paintings are made using a Gestalt ‘Figure-Ground-Reversal’ technique: on an abstracted colour palette of thick impasto oil, the trees appear by painting the sky and space around them rather than the objects themselves. It’s only by appreciating space, or the fullness of ‘emptiness’, that we can see what appears to be there.

Furthermore, the tree is the mythical symbol of life, connecting both the observable world and the underworld through its roots: offering us the reassurance of Hope; and beyond that, Faith.