Painting Methodology
Concept:
My paintings are created with the transcendent in mind. They are direct heirs to the ideas inherent in the great modernist movement of the 20th century embodied in particular by the New York School and later Minimalism in the USA. They also owe a debt of gratitude to many other preceding artists; in particular, Rembrandt and Mondrian.
The notion of purity, progress, spirituality, monumentality and the “New” in painting became trademark features during the 40’s and 50’s in America and Europe. My work is the result of attempts to understand and subsequently to refine the qualities found in the work of that momentous and turbulent period in history. Painting in a time of relative thought, growing secular humanism and pervasive technologies, my work attempts to draw the viewer back into a place of contemplation; a space where the sublime can exert its mysterious effect.
My painted surfaces provide a visual rest from the world where perception often turns in on itself, where imagination is brought into play and a calm stillness can be found. The surfaces often shift between figure and field and although at first glance appear abstract in appearance they always embody the figurative, even when the compositions are in their most reductive state. Each new work always demonstrates simultaneously the arrival to and departure from other states of experience by the artist and carry within them the mysterious residual essence of materials activated through human agency.
Process:
These paintings are made employing an ancient western painting process called “Encaustic” developed by the Egyptians and Greeks. I have invented my own particular technique for use with this method of painting. Using hot, liquid wax and pigment solutions that I make to my own recipe, I construct surfaces that when finished are at once alluring and yet, strange. The thick and visually impervious paint skins that result act as both mirror and window and allow the eye entrance only then to refuse it in a seemingly simultaneous instant.
Painting with hot, molten paint solutions requires direct, spontaneous action and there is little room for error as the paint dries immediately as it cools. The paint is applied direct from pots sitting on a hotplate to a linen surface glued to prepared, constructed wood panels. Sometimes the linen is pre-drawn and sometimes chance is allowed to predominate depending on the artists program. Careful attention is given to the crafting of the paintings through every stage to completion. In every sense of the word refined elegance in final presentation is a chief aim. Encaustic painted surfaces enable the achievement of an optical anomaly and a pervasive sense of mystery. The use of a reduced, carefully graduated range of colours activates the compositions perceptually in a way other paints can only aspire to.
Concept:
My paintings are created with the transcendent in mind. They are direct heirs to the ideas inherent in the great modernist movement of the 20th century embodied in particular by the New York School and later Minimalism in the USA. They also owe a debt of gratitude to many other preceding artists; in particular, Rembrandt and Mondrian.
The notion of purity, progress, spirituality, monumentality and the “New” in painting became trademark features during the 40’s and 50’s in America and Europe. My work is the result of attempts to understand and subsequently to refine the qualities found in the work of that momentous and turbulent period in history. Painting in a time of relative thought, growing secular humanism and pervasive technologies, my work attempts to draw the viewer back into a place of contemplation; a space where the sublime can exert its mysterious effect.
My painted surfaces provide a visual rest from the world where perception often turns in on itself, where imagination is brought into play and a calm stillness can be found. The surfaces often shift between figure and field and although at first glance appear abstract in appearance they always embody the figurative, even when the compositions are in their most reductive state. Each new work always demonstrates simultaneously the arrival to and departure from other states of experience by the artist and carry within them the mysterious residual essence of materials activated through human agency.
Process:
These paintings are made employing an ancient western painting process called “Encaustic” developed by the Egyptians and Greeks. I have invented my own particular technique for use with this method of painting. Using hot, liquid wax and pigment solutions that I make to my own recipe, I construct surfaces that when finished are at once alluring and yet, strange. The thick and visually impervious paint skins that result act as both mirror and window and allow the eye entrance only then to refuse it in a seemingly simultaneous instant.
Painting with hot, molten paint solutions requires direct, spontaneous action and there is little room for error as the paint dries immediately as it cools. The paint is applied direct from pots sitting on a hotplate to a linen surface glued to prepared, constructed wood panels. Sometimes the linen is pre-drawn and sometimes chance is allowed to predominate depending on the artists program. Careful attention is given to the crafting of the paintings through every stage to completion. In every sense of the word refined elegance in final presentation is a chief aim. Encaustic painted surfaces enable the achievement of an optical anomaly and a pervasive sense of mystery. The use of a reduced, carefully graduated range of colours activates the compositions perceptually in a way other paints can only aspire to.