Artist Statement
In a time of post truth, mediums such as video and photo have become less trustworthy and more malleable. The medium of paint is perhaps a less deceitful way of recording. Its language remains encoded as the marks I make are packed with thoughts and feelings. I view these as layers which come in and out of focus in a loop of information.
These feelings include nostalgia for my childhood. As a boy I spent hours looking at my mum’s art books such as the Pre-Raphaelites. This is perhaps why my paintings most often deal with romantic representation. My aim is to record a glimmer of this romantic experience amongst current forces which create uncertainty and weariness in our world. The forces which concern me particularly are the post truth era, political events, current affairs, global warming, queer theory, and the relevance of painting in contemporary art.
Amongst all these concerns I seek some essence of truth. I believe this is what attracted me to decadent literature in my research. Decadents were concerned with heightened experience and aesthetic sensations without a regard for boundaries. However, Europe at the time had become world weary amongst changes such as the Industrial Revolution, Darwin’s Evolution Theory and as ‘unorthodox’ sexuality become more visible in the public eye. I see many similarities to my concerns and their subversive responses to these relentless changes.
First, I expressed these ideas in minimal compositions and two-tone colour pallets such as the ‘Photoshop experiments’ (2020) which were then translated into paintings such as ‘Fags smoke Fags’ (2020). As the year progressed however, I felt that because of the smooth shapes and marks of these works my thoughts and feelings were not as implicit as I had intended. These were perhaps more representative and not expressive of the energy with which I considered my concerns of a contemporary decadent world.
A decisive change in my practice were the paintings ‘Saint Eulalia’ (2020) and ‘Edward Colston’ (2020). These were heavily inspired by the fieldwork session ‘Landscape, clouds and blots’ in which we considered Mamma Anderson’s and Etel Adnan’s works. From this the ‘Flipbook’ (2020) video resulted. In these works, I found that trusting the marks that I made on the canvas brought me closer to the feelings I wanted to express. Opaque heavy blocks sit between translucent fluid paint soaked in linseed oil as light washes of cadmium yellow from the background peak through. The marks become stains, of which some carry more weight than others, indicating shapes and moments.
Furthermore, canvas making has been an important and passionate part of my practice. This year I have tweaked this to including primed paper mounted with gum-tape. Its benefits included a quicker mode of production which has also contributed to my painting language becoming more fluid. I appreciate the ripple effect this has had even on my canvas works. The paintings on paper such as ‘Reading Gaol’ (2021) or ‘Oprah’ (2021) presented a new challenge as to how I would present these. With most paper works I leave the gum tape partly exposed as to emphasize the production side of my process. The works are then mounted on foamboard and float in a simple off-white frame and backing.
Sometimes in the progression of my works words from my readings of decadent literature, contemporary fiction and theory have slipped over into my work. For example, in the painting ‘The sixth star’ (2021) or ‘the yellow book’ (2021) which include words from many different texts. Amongst texts these are: Against Nature by Joris Karl Huysmans, ‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Renaissance by Walter Pater and The Faggots & their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchel. This is a technique I have previously used in my practice to express the overwhelming and often incoherent ideas and feelings which I gather in my research. In this sense, I can see that my paintings sit closely with those of Paul Fleck in thought and aesthetically. His ‘newspaper’ paintings show loosely indicate his subjects amongst which the words from the newspaper and painted words are muddled. Finally, I would like to point out that I am happy to throw my viewer into a bit of a loop. Because even in my own search to unpack romantic experiences and truths I have often found more uncertainty rather than direct answers.