I have been making art for over 40 years, and have returned to painting and drawing with renewed vigour after working in education and being involved with union activism, particularly in the area of equity. My focus is non-representational work in various media on various surfaces. My ideas revolve around shape and line, around stasis and movement, around acumen and emotion. What I struggle towards is an art that balances opposing forces. I want to evoke the broadly expressive while also satisfying the specifically cerebral.
About
Art historian Hal Foster said, “Formlessness in society might be a condition to contest rather than celebrate in art.” Painting and drawing, evoke the ephemeral, at the same time leaving strong traces of the actions of their own making - giving form to the formless. As traditional media, painting and drawing bow to the past; my belief is that it can also respond to the present.
I am caught between the allure of post-modern theory, with its cerebral, dispassionate discourse, and the siren call of more visceral, direct ways of working. Straying too far into the theoretical tends to paralyse my impulse to make art, but my intellect tells me that concepts such as intuition and gut feeling are spurious. The needs of intellect, and the needs of body play out in the process of making non-representational art. The opaque calculus necessary to produce work leaves its marks, in the composition, in the line and shape, in the application of every media. My intent with any individual piece, or series of works is moot – the viewer will bring their own references, connotations, and significance to the objects that I produce.
The age of epic painting, beginning with the Renaissance and ending with Abstract Expressionism has been eclipsed by epic film-making and gaming. You can immerse yourself in the Rococo pleasures of special effect-driven, three-hour blockbusters and labyrinthine, all night online games. Painting and drawing needn’t and shouldn’t compete. Art must take a more poetic tack. Its job needs to become exploring the intimate. Looking at delicate balances, tense interactions, quiet moments, and sudden bursts of emotion. That has become my job.