Output details

Physical Painting

I have adopted a strong research based approach to my painting practice. I have selected the works exhibited at the solo show PHYSICAL PAINTING, Fold Gallery London 2010 as an output to provide evidence of the originality, significance and rigour of this work.

My work has been informed by a cross-disciplinary dialogue with archaeology for a number of years. This has provided me with a balanced objectivity on my activity that my own discipline cannot. I have benefitted from exposure to the current thinking of practioners at the forefront of landscape based studies and the rigour and originality of their thinking has informed mine. My methods involve regular visits to excavation sites run by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford and Art + Archaeology.

This experience has has led me to recognise the inability of images to reveal the extent of our relationship to landscape. I continue to question the heirachy and ordering of the senses that has resulted in the current dominance of image in contemporary British culture. I consider my works operate as a critique to this situation and they propose an alternative experience for the viewer. Current archaeogical thinking has let me to see that a deep understanding of landscape and our place in it – a traditional theme of much British landscape based art – is only possible if we are capable of moving beyond surface appearance and image. The works included in PHYSICAL PAINTING challenge the conventions of the pictorial tradition in painting and align themselves with the central theme of abstraction and post-abstraction in contemporary painting. I am aware that the originality of the work is beginning to resonate as I am being included in exhibitons that suggest a way forward for contemporary painting as a consequence. This has an international dimension.