Assemblage Painting

Artist Statement 2020 The main themes that inform the work are the myths we live by and the paradox of our assumed autonomy whilst relinquishing choice. The work's response is not pedagogic but explorative, visually and often humorously examining human ritualistic dance around constructed realities. The work negates the all-consuming influence and dependence on our technological prosthetics by attempting to reinstate innate corporeal cognisance. This sensory, physical consciousness has yet to be thoroughly evaluated but has been acknowledged to create meaning that informs more forcefully than logic and rationality. I choose oil painting as my medium to visualise possibilities. It contains the necessary elements, rich colour, viscosity and texture to achieve the desired alchemy. Its earthy substance is ground by primordial association, and the construction or composition releases imaginative speculation. The combination of object and radical materiality suspends time and identity in a mix of potential states of becoming. Time and identity are contained in the territory in and around the object; past, present, and possible futures materialised through incarnated experience. Framing the work as Art offers a point of exploration in a safe environment, granting permission to engage with trauma, desire, possibility and obsession within the safe confines of an established social convention. This induces an intrusive but guiltless probing inquiry not as a narrative constrained by language but a diagrammatic, rhizoidal constellation of imagined and experienced possibilities.