Artist Statement

My interest lies in the fundamental elements of painting. All good painting understands itself from when or wherever it comes - figurative or abstract, old or new - that is to say, it knows what it’s made of.

Marks, colours, tone, light, line, space, form and visual rhythm –these are the basic abstract elements of all painting whether a Piero, Vermeer, Cézanne, Mondrian or Pollack.

I have often said that any painting or drawing is more like any other painting or drawing than ever it is like the thing it is of. It is a collection of marks arranged in a particular order on a flat surface with four edges. Even when a painting is of objects, still life, figure or landscape, at the end of the day the object or ‘subjects’ are gone and the painting exists as the object. It is that object I’m interested in – the ‘slab’ on the wall.

I was recently invited to a residency at the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Connecticut, U.S.A. While there I looked, in particular, at four small grey ‘homage to the Square’ paintings and realised that Albers, as all good artists are, was after some kind of truth. I believe his way of getting there was to cut away all the cleverness, artistry and mystique about painting and the painting process until you are left with the simple, clear, pure magic.

This is what I am trying to do. Through the fundamental abstract elements of painting, which are both the subject and the means. Whether on small watercolours and gouache on paper or large oil on linen, the process is one of staining in layers of transparent and opaque paint. Brushing it on and scraping it off. Letting it run (or not), following the gravitational movement of paint. Responding to the scale and shape of the object –the two verticals and two horizontals of the edge, I search for a balance and rhythm until it is itself. The complete slab on the wall with a physicality and mood, a surface of marks, space, and colour that speak and sing together, until they make a clear, pure magic of their own.