Oil Marks 2013

An artist has the ability to exercise control over a world through careful manipulation or distortion, which can only be attained when he has the ability to observe and render the world convincingly (Lucie-Smith 1999:258).

These still life paintings are faithful renderings of the constantly fluctuating observed world, which are reworked in the language of paint, inevitably changing its meaning. These surreal domestic landscapes capture fleeting moments where constantly moving cast shadows of leaves, cast an abstract pattern over the decorative abstract pattern of the carpet. The still life objects are representative models for real world counterparts. It is not a fish, nor the representation of a fish, but a representation of a carved fishlike object. The “house” is only the representation of a model of an imagined house. The plant is a sample of nature taken into the domestic realm and potted for containment.

I pay obsessive attention to the material world, which becomes uncanny and evocative in its familiarity (Turkle 2007). Receding space, an aspect that Modernists strongly negated, creates the illusion of landscape and implies a narrative. The paintings are not attempts towards absolute imitation or abstraction but lies in the transitional zone between the generally known and the mysterious unknown.

Lucie-Smith, E. 1999. Artoday. Revised edition. London: Phaidon.
Turkle, S (ed). 2007. Evocative objects: things we think with. Cambridge: MIT Press.