single work
Ebb and flow
Notes on painting
The works depicted are from two distinct bodies of paintings. The dot-based works are all scaled at 12” x 10” and are part of a large ongoing series titled “Brightness Falls From the Air”, itself lifted from James Joyce’s novel “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. The title in the literary context invokes a scientific/poetic way of observing the natural phenomena that in turn became “food” – inspiration for art (an epiphany in the Joycean sense).
Process
The works are composed of successive layers of pigmented wax and oil paint. The wax is poured on, then incised with a matrix of holes created with different-sized drill bits and small chisels. They are sometimes filled with alternate colours. This process is repeated until some kind of equilibrium – closure -is achieved. The result is that the captured light seems to be radiating from within. Because of the depth of the layers the painting only reveals itself after a sustained viewing.
Flow
The second body of work titled “Flow” is more complex and is compositionally distinct from the previous work. It combines different materials in order to form a single surface. The word “flow”, while it describes a formal rhythm, also refers to a mental state where one is so immersed in the task at hand that the temporal experience of time – the subjective experience – is altered. These works are best displayed in distinctive works or clusters. This work dates from 2017 through today (2018), and is being expanded still.