Creating the illusion of transcient images on ephemeral surfaces involves making a collage that satisfies certain aesthetic and compositional criteria, whilst exploring the particular visual and tactile qualities of both the image and its surface simultaneously. The collage is the 'still-life' object that is carefully studied from direct observation to see how colour and light play at different times across the shallow surfaces and space on both flat and three-dimensional shapes and forms. 'Windows and 'frames' create a sense of depth, revealing and obscuring images caught in the act of being both created and destroyed. This process mimics the natural processes of growth and decay, and is a kind of active meditation on the nature of impermance, and our desire to both 'capture' and 'let go', of significant or meaningful visual phenomena that attract or repel, the 'hooks' so to speak that catch our attention, or to which we assign signifcance or meaning, and which are are beyond conventional ideas of 'beautiful' or 'ugly'. This is essentially an active contemplative process. Although obviously different, it could perhaps be compared to the practice of making a 'kasina', in that it involves making a kind of practical meditation object related to elemental visual and tactile material qualities like earth, air, fire, and water, light, colours, space, and consciousness. Recycling an old and abandoned painting, and building new layers on top, even though this primary image will not be visible later, adds to the 'archeology' of the final painting and it's ultimately hidden, or unknowable mystery for the veiwer.
I aim to make a painting that is both abstract and representational simultaneously, a trompe l'óeil that reveals its material, painted quality, and is an 'honest lie', rather than an emersive and seductive illusion to escape into.....
The images below are the early stages of the work. I will continue to add ímages to this work in progress as it evolves.
