One of the pleasures of looking at a painting that represents an aspect of the world is that of recognition. A representation has the added element of symbolic significance that is often covert or subconscious rather than obvious. Emotional response can be created by the perception of the object that the artist utilises.
What is familiar to everyone is the experience of light, space and colour. Light does not exist for the painter as a tool, only colour and pigment. The illusion of light is created with colour.
What I have always admired about abstraction is the presentation of colour, shape and guesture as its own reality. I want my paintings to do the same thing – to make the perception physical, taking hold of shape, colour and guesture while using the representation of specific objects. I take a perceived visual field and translate it into coloured paint. I want to make the red of the apple, the fragility of a rose, the atmosphere of a landscape feel as real as the subjects themselves. Although I know that the object I am looking at is a glass object, what I am seeing and painting is a range of coloured shapes.
I aim to make a representational painting that incorporates some of the stylistic attributes of abstraction, frontality, large scale, high key colour and guesture. To me the paintings look ‘real’ as opposed to ‘realistic’. Cezanne’s Mont Sainte Victoire doesn’t look like the mountain, the Mont Sainte Victoire looks like the painting Cezanne made of it.
My choice of subjects is made by both the visual and intuitive personal responses to the whole or part of the objects. I do not paint an object because it is attractive and fits in with good taste or style. I prefer people to respond to my paintings qualities rather than my subject matter’s innate attractiveness. I aim to use the subject /object as a metaphor for life.