Alignment Painting

Finding a language for depicting landscape in the post-‘visible light’ era of observation and recording is the focus of my interest. My paintings are influenced by digital technology and it’s effect on how we view our world. For example, the images of our planet taken from space, and the images of our universe taken from earth, as well as from the Hubble Space Telescope. Infra-red imaging, radar and geophysical imaging have allowed Archeologists and Astronomers to see through surfaces and see images invisible to the naked eye. These contemporary ways of seeing have provided a metaphor for the spiritual view, by allowing us to see through time, and beneath surfaces. As well as admiring J M W Turner and Constable for their radical approach to landscape, I have an interest in Australian indigenous art, particularly the work of the artists Rover Thomas and Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. Indigenous ‘landscape’ art incorporates concepts of movement and time in their construction, as well as multiple perspectives that ignore traditional viewpoints such as ‘top’, ‘bottom’, ‘left’ and ‘right’. So my paintings can also be viewed in any orientation. In practical terms, I disrupt the paintings surface by adding layers of canvas to it, creating a sense of 'above' and 'below', 'within' and 'without', 'front' and 'behind'. The map-like qualities of each image are a conscious outcome.