ARTIST STATEMENTThe subject of my work is the process of making it, limitation, repetition and restriction. Restricting my materials, and... Read More
ARTIST STATEMENT
The subject of my work is the process of making it, limitation, repetition and restriction. Restricting my materials, and technique, and with a strict, mark-making action, I deliberately control its painfully slow development and direction. It is a twenty-year investigation.
The mark is a horizontal line. The most direct I know.
The substrate is paper.
Binders are limited to oil and cold wax.
Materials are restricted to ivory black pigment, graphite and charcoal.
The physical process is the monotonous repetitive movement of making lines by bending over the paper, laid flat, and drawing the line or moving my paint mixtures across the surface over and over.
The concept is a question of gemination: ”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he’s not the same man.”Heraclitus of Ephesus.
‘SURFACE WORK’ images are from the latest body of work in the progression, which I began in 2017, installed and exhibited in the derelict Old Cinema building yard, Montejaque, and later in Toro Spacio Gallery, Ronda, Spain. After years of process work, making no public reference to my private influences, I wanted to acknowledge what is behind and always with me: the coal miners in my family working underground. I move on the surface. Therefore, ‘SURFACE WORK’ is a gift; an homage to the manual labour of these men, who repeated their laborious, monotonous, restricted movements digging out coal with picks in the confined space and darkness of the deepest coal mine in Scotland, The Glencraig Colliery, at 610 m below ground.
