Recently drawings I have been making have been onto surfaces preprepared with a variety of marks and colours. Spray paint, inks drips on and paper soaked then stained with colours. Its initial purpuse was to push through some ideas and to evolve certain uses of colour and mark making. It seems to have become more important than that.

 The image laid on top (arrived at through monoprinting or projections normally) is entirely linear. it is merely a structure; a skeleton. It is, obvioulsy, hollow and transparent, revealing all the marks and surfaces which sit beneath it.

 Certain bits of the figure then get ‘filled’ in. I might, for instance, paint up a head. This more select addition of makrs and colour is obvioulsy, however stylised, towards mimetic ends. Adding colour to describe flesh and form. This sets up a surface dialogue.

Suddenly there are two levels of colour. The marks which sit on the surface without any direct mimetic function. They are detached from such specifics. they are primarily about certain formal delights, about the celebration of the makrs making and presentation on a flat surface. Due to their context and the nature of the image they obviously acquire other roles. Thye take on rhythm and melody, supporting or feeding into the mood of the picture.

The other level, as previously discussed, are those areas of consciously mimetic additions.

The interplay is between areas of the figure which are left and those which are covered. The former creates a sense of a hollow and transparent figures. One which we can reach through and behind to the colour on the surface. The very same colour which we read entirely as sitting on the surface. It has, an odd kind of spatial complication. This fluctuates and pulses with the solid areas, the points where the skeleton is given flesh, where it takes on a sculptural quality.

This gives us two paces, two melodies intertwining with each other.