Working on these line paintings, I can look at them and feel some pleasure. Attempting to write about them however brings a degree of nervousness.
The lines hover, and buzz a little. I like the spaces between them. There seems to be a nervous tension, a kind of anticipation suspended in spaces. The graded black – white painting was originally landscape oriented. Turned through 90degrees the lines and spaces seemed more assertive. It’s a very simple effect, but the way in which lines emerge, submerge and recede according to background has always been a delight. The black and white central lines, whose contrasts visually tilt them in opposite directions, seem to magnetically hold each other. (As I write I remember one of the first pieces in the Saatchi programme, magnets similarly bound by mutual attraction, never to meet). The coloured image is divided on arguably obvious lines. I approach the painting with one intention and change my mind as the line grows. The lines articulate space by creating identities of their own. As the space changes there seems to be a moment that feels right. There is a problem with writing; words can generate delusion. I like to see these lines and spaces as gently lyrical, but putting them into words seems to trivialise, or release a vulnerability born of the possibility that there is really less there than meets my eye. They are just lines on coloured surfaces.
