showcase your art to thousands
of visitors every day

“Matter thus offers an infinitely porous, spongy, or cavernous texture without emptiness, caverns endlessly contained in other caverns: no matter how small, each body contains a world pierced with irregular passages, surrounded and penetrated by an increasingly vaporous fluid, the totality of the universe resembling a pond of matter in which there exists different flows and waves.” Gilles Deleuze. The Fold

The illusion of recess has always been a tradition in painting and for the artist it can represent an examination or escape to the self. These works refer to themes of “inner immigration”, the withdrawal into one's self in hard times. Deleuze states that to fold is “to diminish, to reduce, to withdraw into the recesses of the world." As such the works could be seen as various recesses of an internal organic labyrinth, their “pond of matter” built from familiar and unfamiliar co-ordinates of a world folded in upon itself. There is an attempt to balance the opposing themes of control and chaos, organic and synthetic, light and dark. The illusion of penetrated surface, the dynamism of poured paint mixed with patterned multiplicity suggest flux, movement between themes of dissolution, decay, sex and even sci-fi. In the surface I look for an intensity and a repellent seductive quality, like mould under magnification. I wait for the moment at which the alchemical beauty of the paint simultaneously gives rise to a feeling of space and recess beyond the surface, hovering between paint and illusion.

A hands-off approach means the results are unpredictable. I allow both the paint and the digital technology to spread, grow and develop intrinsic fractals or accidents which in turn are re-sampled, repeated and collaged back into the paintings. I balance these with cultural elements, textiles, (lace, paisley) and wood, as well as alchemical symbols (mirroring the reaction of material). Again these are repeated: nostalgia becoming futuristic, referencing the technological sublime. The critic Thomas Weiskel argued that, “In the sublime moment we are on the verge or in the passage to a higher meaning and in bathos our laughter is a defence against the anxiety of losing or falling out of what meaning we’ve got.” In some of the paintings mock-gothic characters and sugar-pastel dollops appear to counter the weight of mood. At times the theme of recess is literal as the surface is physically carved out, revealing the wooden panel beneath the paint, like bone beneath flesh, a reminder of base raw material.

New Seeker

2008
oil on wood
40 x 40

Cluster

2008
oil on wood
40 x 40

Wyrm

2008
oil on wood
40 x 40

Nunt

2008
oil on wood
40 x 40