‘I am just a Painter………. that’s all’
For far too long now I have been like a searching, solitary baboon wandering along on a long narrow road; lost in the wilderness and my reveries. The fates and the furies have revelled and have taken great pleasure in leading me into strange, dark and turbulent waters. Recently for the first time in my life I think I may have found a clearing amidst the chaos and mayhem, just a glimpse of a possibility. I will proceed down this path and see where it leads, hopefully to my intended prey; painting.
I am a figurative artist, I will not discuss the meaning of my paintings or give long winded verbose explanations to add more aesthetic gravitas to the works in the hope of bludgeoning the viewer into subservient submission. Instead, all I will say is that painting is visual communication and therefore the success of the work must be judged visually, the work must stand alone on it’s own merits without the aid of any external support or fall by the wayside. It should not need a buoyancy ring full of worded hot air to support it’s message or language. In my view artists should not explain verbally but visually, after all we are in the business of visual communication are we not. Given this, all I am prepared to say is that the imagery for my paintings is mainly drawn from my subconscious, art history, the world around us and is strongly influenced by both my reveries, nocturnal dreams and personal philosophy. There is always a sense of urgency in my work, a sense of the moment and our own mortality in paint. Mark-marking is at the core of my journey, the voluptuousness of paint on canvas. My dream is to throw all the pigments up in the air and for them to land in perfect harmony and com-positional order. My work has gone through many changes over the years. From life work to Bombergian drawings based on ideas of empathy, followed by painting highly charged autobiographical narrative’s and expressionistic figurative painting’s. All of these particular journeys have helped me to develop my own unique visual vocabulary, creating a language which has increased in pictorial symbols and mutated over the years; filling a larger world in my imagination.
