The landscape can be used to represent a space of the imagination into which we can project our own interpretations. A landscape is able to show us both the tragedies and irreconcilable conflicts of our present situation, and it is also a place where we might escape.
The landscape that I am most familiar with in England has been manufactured by man. It is a kind of reordering of nature in our own image and as such is a reflection of who we are.
Using recognizable images from art history, such as Constable, Claude Lorrain and Turner, along with more contemporary landscapes from Peter Lanyon, Paul Nash, Damien Flood (among others); I offer the viewer a sense of the familiar and then intermingle these with personal landscape narratives from memory. The layering of these appropriated images with my own morph together and become one.
The versatility of paint allows for areas of lucidity and fluid elusiveness. Moving between clarity and abstraction in much the same way as memory discloses itself; only revealing itself in the process of remembering.
I allow the painting to 'reveal' itself in the process of painting. One thing leads me to another. As memory emerges we think it will be one thing and then it can transform. Each time we re-remember we get a layering or folding. Different parts sticking together getting folded inside one another, fading and emerging. It appears that each time we remember something, our memory is permanently altered and as such there is no 'true' memory.
As I remember; images flood into my mind, with both good and bad associations, one image triggering another, as much as I can, I allow these memories into the painting, editing and adding in equal measure; until finally a composition settles.
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Sifting Forms Returned
Oil on Canvas 45x35cm |
