Fragments of a dream
These pieces are further explorations and a certain amount of playfulness and experimentation into externalising the internal.
They originated as images of pieces of my painting ‘Fools Gold’ which I found to be paintings within their own right. By taking photos of fragments of something, that action of framing and narrowing down the focus cannot help but create something different again. I think it allows the imagination to do something else with what is captured. Different suggestions and ideas are manifested as the border and emphasis is altered. It might be that detail that gets lost in the big painting can really be studied and comes into its own, or a certain perspective looks quite different when it is isolated.
It does not surprise me that these pieces can work like this as when I create the original painting I do a lot of detailed work very close to the canvas, becoming very absorbed in the activity, so in a sense in isolation to the rest of the painting – although I periodically step back to see what this has done as a whole, and what I need to do for it to unite (or deliberately jar) with everything else..
In respect to these fragmented images I have transferred them to found pieces of wood (all quite small) – sometimes going over the sides so that I was effectively crossing over the boundaries and borders that one would expect from a painting. As the images turned corners, it gives them an extra dimension they did not have before. They are not aiming to be loud or sensationalistic – but rather trying to take a quiet, contemplative turn. Although three dimensional, these pieces I still consider to be paintings and not sculptures. I have entitled the pieces as a collection ‘Fragments of a Dream’ – named after the musical collaboration by classical guitarist John Williams and flamenco guitarist Paco Peña.
