Good v Evil

The dichotomy of good and evil is a concept that is accepted by all cultures. Indeed, man's innate sense of right and wrong became the basis of organised religion and morality. The story of the Fall of Man in Judaism and Christianity explains that this knowledge was once only in the domain of the divine but when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they gained this understanding for all men.

John Milton, in his epic poem, Paradise Lost, puts forth that even before the fall of man, the forces of good and evil were always in conflict. He tells of a celestial battle between the rebel followers of Satan and the faithful angels of God:  "Arms on armour clashing bray'd/ Horrible discord, and the madding wheels / Of brazen chariots rag'd: dire was the noise/ Of conflict."

In this painting, Geraldine Javier imagines the moments before this final conflagration. Originally painted as four panels, Good v. Evil uses the imagery of a forest to depict the two sides in conflict, where birds and trees stand in light and shadow. The central figure of each panel is a tree, done in Javier's painterly style. The trees stand side by side: one shrouded with an ethereal blue light and the other covered in darkness. The delicate embroidery of the birds that have been embedded in each canvas acts as a textural counterpoint to the starkly painted maze of branches. These nests of encased glass become places of refuge for the fragile creatures in the unfolding battle.

Interestingly, the birds for each tree were selected based on colour. It was only after she had done more research that the artist realised many of the birds she used for the "good" tree were actually birds of prey. In the natural world, the schemes of light and darkness, good and evil, have no meaning. Javier seeks to explore this dichotomy as a truth of the human condition. In these works, the artist and viewer become truth seekers wandering in a forest and discovering what is hidden beyond the tangle of trees.