In scenes which sit on the divide between public and private space, the notion of luxury as portrayed in popular culture serves as a setting in which narrative can - and does - occur. The scenes I paint have an inherent sense of familiarity recognizable from popular culture and television. Working from found images from the public domain gives source imagery a certain currency for me; it already has a loaded cultural or experiential
Read More...
In scenes which sit on the divide between public and private space, the notion of luxury as portrayed in popular culture serves as a setting in which narrative can - and does - occur. The scenes I paint have an inherent sense of familiarity recognizable from popular culture and television. Working from found images from the public domain gives source imagery a certain currency for me; it already has a loaded cultural or experiential significance before I come across it. Combining these found images through a process of sketching, digital editing and finally through physical painting, layers of narrative from culture and art-historical references reveal themselves incidentally - much like the mechanisms of a Hollywood production.
Formally and conceptually, the reference to constructed environments becomes the main function of my paintings; an allusive stasis borrowed from the mediums of photography and film, and adapted to painting in an ongoing dialogue with contemporary cultural discourse.
The heightened sense of colour in the hypnotic shimmer of aqua pools in the paintings serves a dual function as an indirect reference to the screen but also encapsulates the idea of escapism. In 'Pool With Yellow Float' the inviting glow of the pool's surface draws the viewer in, with only a thin silhouette of hedgerow separating the viewer from the space - it is tantalisingly within reach. The exotic foliage and low hanging power lines locate the scene in a typical Los Angeles setting, heightened by the effect of the pool and distant glow of the city lights in the dusk. The float motif has been recurring in the paintings over the last couple of years; it adds a fragment of narrative, a human presence in an otherwise private scene. It also serves an allegorical function, echoing the paintings of Hockney and the mythic promise of Los Angeles.
Close