Cheshire Cat Painting

The painting begin as a dialogue, both with a particular Folk Tale and also with an image from art history – often a painting by an Old Master that may then be used as a starting point from which to playfully but reverently deviate. I am interested in how stories are retold and re-imagined, and how the retelling alters and embellishes the original even as it seeks to render it vital and alive once again for a new audience. Along with this concern comes a question of how modern developments may be balanced by a dialogue with established traditions and past narratives, and yet not become nostalgic. Whereas in the past, the artist or thinker had the shared symbolic order provided by religion within which to refer and ground their work, the artist today must find a way of surviving the bewildering plurality and subjectivity that has become the norm, if what they have to say is to maintain any force or credibility. This work is made in two or three sittings, and there was an attempt to apply the paint in a concentrated, semi conscious way in order to try to get myself as much out of the way as possible as the work was being made. Inevitably this strategy failed spectacularly, and I was often left tinkering and fiddling with areas of the work to add detail and tease out a form that had been recognised and demanded to be attended to. The works were theatrical and melodramatic, and this became something that I grew to enjoy about them, perhaps because it was something that I had not anticipated or lay completely within my control. The sheer enjoyment of making these works was not intended to be an exercise in grand, expressionistic gestures, but was rather an attempt to transform and renew the subject through the act of making.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:145 W x 175 H x 5 D in

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