Optimism i Painting

Process is central within the painting practice of Rod McIntosh. His mark making has a fluidity and honesty that reveals itself through a muted pallet of monotones. This lends the work a striking and minimal appearance, which coalesces with the quiet sensitivity to his materials, time invested and action. Presence and concentration is key to his practice in cultivating a meditative quality. Examining his temporal gestures, alongside ideas of mindfulness, permanence, attachment and acceptance. For McIntosh the provenances and particular characteristics of each material are of great importance. Following closely traditional eastern recipes for archival inks and pastes he works upon delicate Chinese papers that absorb every fluid gestural movement as he accepts the brevity of a final committed action. With his body, the breath along with materials, and repetitive often-obsessive processes, focuses an attention to the present. Observing and recording the moment of creation within a continuum. He speaks of them as; “Physical meditations, that offers himself, and the viewer, a moment to pause.”