Artist Statement

When painting, there are a number of themes that unfold for me on the canvas. Painting is, in its simplest form, a vehicle for exploring the effects of time. I try to build up a sense of painterly concentration, in an attempt to create a feeling of scintillant action or tension on the surface of the painting through marks, gestures and forms.

I use a number of tools and materials such as turpentine, varnish and Liquin. The evidence of time is left in the speed and immediacy of the application of these materials with oil and gloss paint and in the effects that emerge during the drying process. Often what emerges are agitated vertical and horizontal drips that hang down or across the painting.

I like the interplay between light and dark, the back and forth, here and now; allowing the passage of time between specific visual structures in the residue of pigment to emerge, what Rothko referred to as ‘the nature of painting within the works themselves'.

Through my work I want to know what painting can be. As well as exploring the illusionary depths of the picture plane, I am equally interested in the physical qualities of paint and the structure of the canvas as an object itself.

The subject matter is the shape of space, real and metaphorical. The shapes being a series of lines, an undefined dark area, or a gesture of white paint; a suggestion of solids or negative forms that may echo nature or forms found in the city environment in which I live. These forms are not beautiful in a relative way, but when added with ideas regarding space, time, pigment residue and colour saturation, these forms can perhaps yield their own special pleasures.