Artist Statement:
I enter the studio with no idea of what is going to happen. I bring a number of things to the process- a knowledge and understanding of grammar and language and a series of references that provide the basis for a range of ideas. There begins a process of discovery, invention and a curious desire to reveal to myself something new and exciting, and allow me to view things in a different way.
The hope is that the viewer will also come to see things differently.
The paintings are constructed from many references, from experiences noted while travelling, to building reconstruction in rural Aberdeenshire.
Many of the works over the past 25 years have been made in tandem with physically rebuilding parts of the house, garden and studio. Despite the difficulties in doing this, there is an obvious link between the two, reflecting very much what I do or who I am, and influencing the visual work I create .
All of the paintings go through considerable reconstruction in their making. The journey each one goes through involves many changes and altered states. Variations in surface, layering and how various parts interact with each other, owe much to the language of collage. They are regularly cut up, re-arranged or modified in order to achieve a state of ‘rightness’. There are often up to 50 works in progress at any one time and none are ‘safe’ until in their frames. Some of the works relate to the idea of worth – what were once precious or cherished objects can so easily be discarded or neglected and through time or rediscovery be reviewed or analysed with fresh curiosity and take on a renewed significance. I hope that the paintings, although linked to this idea, retain a level of ambiguity that allows them to be examined as objects in their own right.
Professor Lennox Dunbar RSA