Oil on Canvas 6.

Oil on canvas. 75x75cm

Have you ever played the game where you are given say three objects and you must create a story incorporating these said objects?

This composition gives the spectator the objects and leaves the spectator to make up the story behind these disparate objects. 

The abstract shapes integrated into the composition distract the spectator away from the objects, from their storyline; the spectator finds themselves oscillating between the two.   

Each person has a story to tell, each object stirs the memory repertoire into being yet each person is distracted from telling their story.

Mixed Media 3

Mixed media. 75x75cm

In this painting I tried to disguise the face, distracting the eye of the spectator by using different mediums and simple shapes over the face. This forces the spectator to fluctuate between the two compositions, each composition maintaining their position, never becoming unified. Although on the same page, they coexist but are not co-dependent.

Mixed Media 2

Mixed media. 92x110cm

This painting was conceived over a period of a year. Elements were added and subtracted until some sort of movement began to happen within the painting. Shapes seem to float across the work thus creating many surfaces leading the eye into the work itself.

Mixed media are used in order not to become complacent and reliant upon one particular medium: also to make it more difficult to manage an interrelated composition both visually and spiritually: to accept the character of each medium, its weaknesses and its triumphs.

'Me' 2009

 

Today I am not the person I was yesterday and tomorrow I’ll be someone else.

This painting is about what it is to be ‘me’, in the figurative sense. Who am I, what am I? It applies to each and every one of us. The impossibility of defining oneself: when one tries, one ends up contradicting oneself.

We all have many faces; woman, mother, wife, artist, friend, daughter, etc. With each persona comes a different identity, albeit negligible at times.  We react to situations and environments depending upon who we are at that time and how emotional we feel at that point.

The face in the painting is obviously not me but represents the impossibility of anyone knowing the real ‘me’ in all of us. It is difficult for us to know who we really are let alone anyone else.

I try to annihilate my work by doing the complete opposite of what I want to do: for example, if I instinctively want to harmonise a particular area, I will wilfully do the exact opposite and create discord. If I want to contrast a particular area then I will wilfully harmonise. This is a simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating experience and one I wouldn’t recommend to the faint-hearted.

The shapes, colours, textures and mixed media are all working for and against each other, coming together to form a cohesive oneness: me.