Gallery
Reality altered
Digitally manipulated photos used as starting points for these paintings. Sometimes heavy use of the "liquify effect" produces a largely abstract result, others have a tension between liquid distortion and recognizable forms. Some of these pictures are negatives painted with the shade and colour inverted, others are of the world distorted as through water, giving them a hallucinatory quality.
Landscape
Landscape painting. Usually with a photographic image as the reference material. The intent here is to be true to life as opposed to expressive or inventive.
Expressionism / Semi Abstract
Visual evocations of elements of nature. I use the liquid properties of paint to communicate some of the liquid qualities of the physical world. also there can be quite a degree of variation in manner and thickness of paint application. I employ methods that I feel best emulate a given suchness and play the different characteristics against each other for emphasis. Or I merge them to suggest transition and becoming. Through this also I endeavour to create spatial depth and atmospheric perspective and give the piece a greater dynamic range.
Urban People
People were conspicuous by their absence from my early work so I started working to rectify this a number of years ago. Working from life on portraits and figures is probably the most challenging thing i've ever attempted. I also like to work from photographic reference as seen here, as it can capture a moment of reality in great detail. Most of the material for this body of work I shot c2001 with some more supplied by K. Coulbeck, who I happened to meet whilst working on this project. These works are not intended as social comment though they can be, and often are read as such. For me however this was simply about capturing a moment of reality within the sphere of contemporary humanity, their expressions, affectations, interactions or alienation.
Urban Landscape
Buildings, structures, urban scenes and dereliction. I remember once watching a man on tv who had been blind most of his life, I recall how one day at home his sight suddenly returned. When this occurred he happened to be facing a brick wall in his garden, and he just stood there for the longest time taking in this wonderful thing with all its nuances of colour and texture.
Surrealism
I am often asked as to the meaning of and inspiration for this type of work. Many of them are not intended to mean anything they were conceived only with concern for how they worked visually, and interpretation left open to the viewer. These works have their origins in momentary visions of the minds eye sometimes fleshed out with the help of photos or studies, sometimes drawn from the imagination only. A few of these paintings have a theme albeit a rather tenuous one, often produced through a mixture of spontaneity and planning.
Abstract
Abstracts can have qualities evocative of real world phenomena or objects I employ in my work sometimes (most noticeable in the expressionism section). Here, however, with just a few exceptions, the only concerns were with balance, colour, shape and shade etc, and with the dynamic properties of liquid. Pure abstraction.
Grotesque
Gallery dedicated to subjects ranging from challenging to just plane daft. When painting a likeness of something the ability to render light, form, perspective and texture are as much the concern of the artist as the subject represented or in some cases maybe more so. I would much rather produce a well painted image of something that may be thought of as an unworthy subject matter for art, than paint a more widely accepted subject poorly. There is also an element of the contrary and defiance on my part in choosing these subjects, along with more than just a little humour, they appeal to my appreciation of the ridiculous.
Miscellaneous
Experiments and singular subjects that do not fit easily into the other categories. Also a number of life studies included here.