Thursday 25 December 2014

White Form (Mixed media on canvas, 25cmx20cm 2014)

The link between intent and the paint itself is one I find perpetually intriguing. We want to show something and in the case of painting the staging is to a high degree predetermined. There is a person, a surface and paints that should leave some sort of sign on said surface in accordance to the actions of the person working. When finished, we have a point of congealed presence that can be read, contemplated and probed for intellectual and/or emotional content as we see fit. Like a furnished room we get a feeling for upon entering it, we enter a painting and see where the 'things have been put' and indeed what the 'things' themselves are. Is it a tidy or messy room? Spacious? Cramped? Traditionally decorated? Or is it a empty waiting room for some unknown appointment? Does the room fill us with a comfortable feeling of homeliness or is it a harsh stop gap in some urban dystopia or indeed anything in between? A painting is always viewed in some context, none more important than the context of the paintings the viewer has previously experienced. A different context is the body of work the artist in question has produced. Each work is a pin on their map of places visited as it were and following their thusly plotted course hopefully weaves an intelligible pattern that can be read just like the individual work may be read. This small piece of mine was a work between works, just a levity and an angle on form and flat colour applied to a differently finished background.