Posh Rug On Fire Painting

My paintings use the fireplace as an antiquated vessel or threshold, the locus from which smoke and fire depart, and with them an obfuscation of half-memories, dreams and echoes of subconscious imagery. 
 
 Similar to staring into a fire and conjuring hallucinations from one’s own imagination, I attempt to develop form, narrative and structure in my work within the physical and incidental act of painting. In one instance a grouping of muddied, indeterminable snail-like creatures exist as a fleshy mass of painted gestures and in the next, cosmic light bursts through a pub window illuminating a banal potted plant. In another painting thick, black smoke bellows from an open hearth and in the next it surrounds the viewer as they are situated within the fire.
 
 Like cupping smoke in one's hands and then looking inside to see it dissipate into the atmosphere, the images consist of momentary revelations within passages of painterly gesture - internal logic always teetering between figurative description and abstractions.
 
 When the work is successful I intend for a psychologically charged incident between the viewer and painting to occur; a subtle alarm, pregnant with unrealities, and a materiality that advocates for a slow reading, with the paintings gradually revealing themselves.