Some reasoning behind starting with a photograph and ending with a painting:
I start with photography so I can try out many compositions quickly. I can take up to 80 photographs with only slight differences in composition, just for the one image. I’m trying to capture something that isn’t necessarily visual.
I want to start with a whole and then, gradually push, smudge, erase some of this wholeness. Until there is more, than there was before, even though there is less. Reveal the hidden.
I use photography to record the facts. I find the overall process of photography frustrating. What I capture in the photograph often seems to exclude the atmospheric quality experienced. This may be due to my basic photography skills and/or the lack of desire to master photography. This may change one day. What I am trying to capture isn’t physical so perhaps it can’t be caught in a physical manner.
Photography interests me in a theological sense. The obvious references are writers such as Susan Sontag (On Photography) and Roland Barthes (Camera Lucida) etc.
That desperate desire to hold onto a bit of forever-ness.
Possession.
The inevitable death of now.
I am trying to catch and stop myself being seduced by the desire to do what the mechanical lens has already done. When I don’t the painting is overworked. The aim is for the paintings to move further and further away from the photograph.
