Bob Aldous’s poetic images use text and symbols to create absorbing work with an internal story, meaning within the work informed by the context of the exhibited environment. Desperation, loss and abandonment are the themes, how we overcome those intense negative emotions that can become all consuming. This art faces negativity- without compromise, without insulation- just looking into the emptiness and smiling. It is within the smile that the energy sapping negativity is lulled and abated. Not through force but through seduction. Like the melody from the harp of Orpheus that lulls Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, into a sleep

In the work there is a questioning of the quick fix sound bites and subtle psychological manipulation often manifested in the media; an approach that tends to brush difficult subject matter under the carpet. Memorials are produced, a remembrance service held after a wave of public emotion; our memories stoked and left smoldering with the epilogue “it is time to move on”. However the angel within Durer’s Melancholy lays slumbering, waiting for the next tragedy to unfold. There is no resolution, no catharsis, just letting issues lie, to surface again in a different guise.

Bob Aldous’s art lies rooted in the romantic tradition with the emphasis on the sublime to overcome difficulties. There is the use of symbolism from both European and Eastern traditions that lies within our shared experience, giving rise to a universal narrative.