Joshua Cann

I am not a natural writer but writing develops and solidifies my ideas; which are an undercurrent to the focus on aesthetics in my art practice.

Many ideas have emerged in conversation with other artists. Studies in Art History have highlighted Art’s perpetual referencing back to itself. I can see connections between Michelangelo and Francis Bacon in their desire to intensify reality in their work.
Discovering these echoes in artistic ethos entices me to explore the idea of time and process in new ways.

I Work in many different mediums, playing with new materials escapes formulaic work.

Sir Joshua Reynolds’s (first president of the Royal Academy of Arts) once questioned the motives behind his painting. His portraits were based on traditional techniques but experimented with current and exciting modern influences to make his work different, new and exciting.

Similarly, in my work I like to think that the present is fuelled by a sense of immediacy of what is the “now”. This exists in continual process. My ambition is to produce work that reflects a sense of time and is visually arresting; express a certain duality.

I appropriate the dichotomy in re-activation of memory juxtaposed against the present to other...