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My main body of work is of painting. I use photography and video as a means to distance myself from my paintings. These enable me to broaden my viewing points. In the process of photographing and editing I can challenge my ideas in different forms of representation thus by translating them I find I can often transcend them, and reach their fuller meaning.
I Paint mainly on Perspex and plastic sheets, as the translucent surface enables me to challenge their relationship to the space in which they are hanging. This is achieved by reflecting their surroundings on and off the surface of the painting and also by incorporating them as the painting is not hung traditionally on the wall, but rather frames the wall against which it leans or hangs.
The death of painting was a trigger to this kind of painting. My attempt was to make a clear coffin by executing the paintings on the reverse side of the Perspex sheet. |
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This process sealed the painting from the viewer, concealing its' tactile features leaving no clues to the process of its making. Manipulating the painting in this way made it more of a strange object removed and detached from its' own history, its' body thus reduced to a spectacle. The gesture of applying the paint and its' initial tactile potentials such as smell and texture are sealed beneath the Perspex now appearing only as a shade of a colour, merely a number in a paint catalogue. The image painted distanced by the reflections on the surface of the painting. This technique enhances the aspect of the artefact the painting as a mirror. Looking through the reflections at a painting, that is constantly being modified by its' surroundings due to its reflective nature, creates an awareness to the act of seeing. The viewer becomes aware of the choices made in order to see. Questions arise to what is and isn't part of the painting? And each gaze recreates the painting in a different way.
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