Evolving from my ‘St Giles’ video shown in St Petersburg recently has been a new series of paintings and prints.
In a new series of paintings I have taken the octagonal motif of the video (distorted lights on a ferris wheel) and repeated it, playing with the gradual build up of tone as each shape overlaps the ones beneath. This is a new direction for my work, and one I think has a lot of mileage. I like the tension between repeated geometric shapes with surface texture and hand-rendering.
As usual, my platform for experimentation is the print room. I decided to experiment with the octagonal shape: I drew the repeated shape in a grid on a large sheet of paper and then twisted the paper to distort the shapes, hence creating a 3D quality of peaks and troughs. I then photographed these and projected them onto plates, the dots were then covered in carborundum, inked up and printed.
The success of these has inspired a new series of “paintings”. I plan to create the dots in relief (made from aluminium disks) raised above a support and displayed with a spot light: shadows will be created, which will move as the spectator walks past. Hopefully the origin of the optical illusion will be unclear. The synthesis of paint and texture will be introduced subtly. I am looking forward to where this slight detour will take me.
