fall apartrait 1 Print

My new work is focused on the process. It is an act of creation and destruction. I reproduce found images using traditional mark-making techniques, and through the process the paper and image will become distressed, sometimes completely fall apart, to be re-constructed in a new form. The paper becomes a medium in itself. The surface is important to me as the image and paper become re-galvanised and the image becomes an object. I use found images, my own personal photographs, and the application of marks and paint, like words in a story, poem or conversation. These seemingly unrelated images and marks ultimately create a reality of their own, layering information and narratives, alongside conflicting techniques and awkward compositions. This can have a sometimes bleak outcome, but can often contain humorous and unexpected elements. My subject matter is autobiographical and based on my own observations and experiences. For me, painting is about the experience; it must be authentic. Mark-making is an intensely complex and primitive human action that can contain a multiple array of emotions, narratives and information. I produce work based on a set of its own rules that will lead itself to a conclusion, often destroying the work to rebuild it again, but stronger, re-galvanised. I like to transport and filter images to make something old look new and vice-versa. A painting takes time, and it contains and stores information like a mind processing the events of a day or a decade.