untitled painting Painting

In my work I try to entertain a dialogue between science and art. I have developed over the years a need to paint images that require the viewer to ask the questions... What is it? How was it made? Images from nature such as ice formations, microbiology, geology and topography are often starting points for my paintings. However I am not interested in merely copying these images but emulating their structures. I want the viewer to see these influences within the painting but for the painting to hold something more...its own "˜spirit'. Sometimes this requires me to find new processes for applying paint or using non traditional materials. One series of work entitled 'sastrugi formations' came about after photographing ice formations on the top of a mountain near Callender, Stirlingshire. I decided to make a series of paintings that mimicked the structures seen. I did this by manipulating un-stretched canvas and by then pouring paint over the canvas. As the paint dried into the crevasses I slowly stretched the canvas tight over stretchers. This masked the painting 'process' making it difficult for the viewer to identify. The paintings took on their own nature distant from the touch or mark of the artists hand. Strangely when exhibiting this work I was randomly approached by the Professor of Ice and Snow studies at UCL who informed me that what I had visually created was nearly identical to that which he had viewed through a microscope that day of an ice crystal. In 1997 I lost the sight in my right eye. This has had a profound effect on my work and outlook! Since this point I have been interested in painting the visual messages my brain receives from my blind eye; ripples and circles of light, frequencies pulsing with changing tone....an abstract visual language and unfortunately one that can only be recorded by my brain. I paint to make sense of, or to amalgamate the visual elements that I find interesting. My hope is that the viewer investigates or locates the origin of the image, questions how its made or is moved by its presence. We all occupy two worlds; the one we all share and the abstract one that only we inhabit. Evans graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1997 with a MFA and he has exibited throughout England and Scotland since then.