I am a painter. The subject of my work is process, limitation, restriction and repetition. Restricting myself to only certain materials and a strict, repetitive mark-making action, I deliberately control the painfully slow progression of the surfaces. I invite the viewer to find nuances and explore, as I explore, the sameness and, in my eye, huge differences which unrelentingly have driven me for twenty years. This is my practice.
The work is about variation within the confines of limitation, restriction and repetition.
The mark is a horizontal line; the most direct I know.
The substrate is paper.
Any binders I use are limited to oil and cold wax.
The materials are restricted to ivory black pigment, graphite and charcoal.
The physical process is my constrained, monotonous movement of repetitive mark-making, made by bending over paper laid flat, and drawing the line or moving my paint mixtures across the surface again and again, over and over using straight rods of wood or steel.
The construct is the idea of gemination, and after twenty years of this art practice: ”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 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 2004 feet below ground.
