Candid Arts

My work is currently concerned with the act of painting, addressing the issue of what it means to be a painter in the context of contemporary art practice. I am interested in the relationship between the abstract and the figurative. Having become interested in the process of painting, I have adopted a more gestural way of applying pigment to surface. It is the relationships within the picture plane that are of significance to me as a painter, by creating a tension between colours, surfaces, and spaces I aim to make an image that is both flat and illusionistic. The research of my practice is firmly rooted in the production and accumulation of the paintings themselves, as this is the greatest way of understanding the material and accepting the medium as subject matter. In essence, my paintings create a space, not an actual or lived space, but a virtual one, that maybe will exist somewhere sometime. This imagery suggests alternate universes, virtual worlds and constructed realities; of a world similar to our own but one that we cannot ever fully grasp. These digital landscapes not only comment on today's technological advances but also hopefully address issues related to non-figurative painting. My work presents the viewer with a continually shifting pictorial language developed through the core activity of painting. I use this appropriation as a tool to place my work within the wider canon of painting, referencing that which has gone before while attempting to situate my practice in the context of contemporary painting. The term ‘idios kosmos’, discussed by science fiction author Philip K Dick, denotes that we each have our own unique observations and understanding of how the world operates. This is a fundamental concept in my approach to painting and image making.