Have just written an artists statement as I needed one for a few things. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to upload, as over time we will then have a history of statements. I think it will provide an interesting formal documentation of how my work changes; or more importantly how my articulation or thoughts on it change. You would hope both would get more sophisticated over time, but that’s being very optimistic. Anyway, statment attached below. (currently working on putting both profiles; on this website, together, should be finished by the end of the week.)
My Practise seems to gravitate towards recurring figural motifs; often seen falling or floating between two realms. Occasionally a protagonist will appear. Architectural constructions, systems of grids and geographic reference points provide the stage upon which these actors attempt to perform. No longer connected to pre-existing, bastardised, narratives, they have to find their own scripts. These normally revolve around a sense of tragedy, paused transience or lose. Presented in such an ambiguous context they hope to reveal, to the artist and viewer, allegories and meta-narratives.
Imagery is found through a synthetic construction of parts and processes. Paint is explored in a wish to reveal its full linguistic potential as a signifier with the ability to have multiple references without contradiction. Paint as paint, as flesh, as emotive vehicle, symbolic source of light and narrative prop. The organic nature of paint interacts with the more solid, preordained geometric structures which sit below. An attempt to find harmony between these two melodies, painterly process and plastic construction, is what hopefully gives the work some dramatic tension.
Other detritus are manipulated and collaged together to interplay with the nature of the medium. Newspaper cutting, drawings, maps, receipts and found materials are all brought together. Some arrive loaded with meaning, other find meaning and often any pre-existing meaning is half emptied. All of the above elements are organised across the actual two dimensional space and within the constructed three dimensional realm with a desire to stage manage our reading.
The neurosis to paint means any written or logical justification is hard to articulate. Broadly I know I am attempting to personally respond to a history of image makers and painters. Whilst constantly changing I dispute certain historical claims of paintings evolution and instead see more continuous histories which underlie the practise. For instance, painters have always been interested in the truth that painting is both self reflexive (celebrating the spreading of a medium over the surface) and a conveyor of meaning beyond itself (a window onto another world). Neither facet is singularly observed by any artist, whatever writers like Vasari or Greenberg might suggest. As such we are not necessarily in a unique position as twenty first century painters, able to refer to both, but are part of a longer lineage. I arrogantly, therefore, attempt to respond to this long history. From Titian, through Carravagio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, David, Gericault, Delacroix, Manet through to the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, the ‘abstractions’ of Rothko and Pollock and the work of Francis Bacon. I am starting to understand how other contemporary painters respond to this. Painters such as Matthias Weischer, Callum Innes, Howard Hodgkin, Brian Graham, Tapies, Neo Rausch, Peter Doig and Hughie O’Donoghue. In all cases it is the construction of space, figural narrative and the importance of the medium which I seem to draw greatest interest from.
Beyond such pretentious and academic reasoning I see my work as an attempt to find eternal and specific metaphors for the human condition. The nameless solo figures can become vehicles of mans plight. The permanent tragic themes of memory lose and a struggle to transcend reality is searched for. More specific contemporary conditions underpin the images. The uncertainty of current political, philosophical and personal contexts seems to inform my work. Meaning, for me, is not a preconceived thesis but a poetic discovery, found from the dialectical relationship between paintings internal and external frame of reference. From the specific conditions of the practise metaphysical notions can be revealed.
