Watering Hole Painting

ARTIST'S STATEMENT Eight dayglow dreamscapes, painted in oils, disrupt expectations and teeter on the surreal. Exotic animals cool off in opulent swimming pools and maximalism reigns. Inspiration came from a book by Hollywood silent movie star Marion Davies who lived, for a time, at Hearst Castle in California as mistress of controversial American publishingtycoon William Randolph Hearst. The castle, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, was thecouple’s very own Xanadu. Now a touristattraction, it was once a playground to the rich and famous, replete with 42 bedrooms, 61bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, the famous Neptune swimming pool, and a menagerie of exotic animals. There is nothing minimalist about it. Borrowing from this, The Invention of Fancy explores the concept of a utopia constructed by the imagination, which is materially more achievable on canvas. Playful distortions and use of colour, and animals given unexpected proximity to people, all contribute to the unlikeliness of the scenes. For some, it will be the absence of darkness and fear that will seem poignant and revealing. The acid-trip colour palette is not new for me. I expect I will be accused of gilding the lily in the quest for ever brighter and ever louder combinations. I approach each canvas as a colour puzzle that needs to be solved, and it borders on the obsessive. I hope it will have a dopamine-effect on theviewer. But, as well as joy, also present isnostalgia and loss, for something that never was, and never could be. The process has been frustratingly evasive, but at the same time, these are places that can be anything I want them to be. “I would not wish to possess that kind of memory which retains with accuracy and certainty all names and places. I never knew it to accompany much invention of fancy. It is almost exclusively the blessing of dullness.” – Aaron Burr (As cited in The Times We Had: Life With William Randolph Hearst, by Marion Davies, 1975)