At the beginning of March 2020, when I first started work on my new collection ‘The Surface of Things’, the questions I was asking in my paintings at that time were personal and challenging. As time passed and we all flowed in and out of restrictions as the pandemic became apparent, one key theme in my work starting showing up. The horizon.
This horizon almost appears as a crust, separating what is above from the matter below. A shift in my use of colour during late summer moved my work into another different direction and helped me reimagine the division and blend the surface. As time passed, and in response to my personal journey, I began to open up this crust. Eventually, as you can see in some of the paintings the surface opens up and the light begins to flood in.
For me, painting is like keeping a journal. When I look back at my work I can see what I was trying to work out. ‘The Surface of Things’ has many more layers than is immediately obvious at first. As I continue to work out what I’m exploring and finding in my work, the merging of two elements represent a variety of things; water and air, visible and invisible.
My curiosity for colour as a surface and as a means of creating a state of calm drew me towards the use of green. The colour green is known to induce a state of calm and tranquillity, most likely due to its strong associations to nature. The new work that emerged once I started using more greens include ‘Fragmented Light’ and ‘Green Light’.
My preoccupation with the horizon in all of my work, creating it and dispensing of it, is my attempt to create something fluid rather than final or finished.