Leonardo da Vinci once advised the budding artist with creative block to leave behind his blank canvas and stare at the stains on walls. He said: ‘If you look upon an old wall covered with dirt, or
the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landscapes,battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces, draperies etc. Out of this confused mass of objects, the mind will be furnished with an abundance of designs and subjects perfectly new.’
Searching for inspiration in the dust on walls or the flaking paint on doors, the chance mark and the naturally occurring stain have become central motifs in my work. Visual references are particularly important in the early stages and I am constantly searching for new material. Recently, a trip dedicated to visiting Italian ghost towns provided me with a wealth of close-up photographs of decrepit textures.
With these photographs as a starting point I work quickly onto acetate film, using the paint brush like a drawing tool and allowing the oil paint to appear facile and momentary. The initial image is
modified and reduced with the aim of pursuing the idea that the mark-making process of the artist relates to nature’s own mark-making – dripping, layering and staining – and allowing the paintings
to become entities in their own right. The material presence softens the space created: colours and brushwork wrestle for prominence over form. With both clarity and irresolution, the paintings seems to look back, asking to be identified. Following the study of the work of various Abstract Expressionists, such as the American painter
Franz Kline’s energetic black and white paintings, the resulting acetate images are then scaled up and translated onto large canvasses. Bolder and more constructed compositions are created, with some of the subtle elements of weathering and decay attempting to assert themselves.
Other influences include the artists Varda Caivano, Vija Celmins, Helen Frankenthaler, Claire Harvey and Ian McKeever, as well as Gaston Bachelard’s book ‘The Poetics of Space’ and the Japanese aesthetic of ‘Wabi Sabi’.