Paintings in context

date > July 2015
media > archival digital print (framed or unframed)
size > super A3
status > (edition of 5)

> A small painting - itself a copy of a fragment of another - was taken from the studio and thrown into the snow. A new, different, powdery, wet, white space. Both a natural and soft place for a painting and a destructive hostile one. The paint glows against the brilliant white, looking both sublime and desperately lost. The dried paint feels dead compared to the glistening moist crystals. Snow is like the ultimate pigment.

> One night, I dream of burying a painting. In heavy sticky dark mulch. It is both about preserving it, hiding it and like a funeral, a final goodbye. In the end, all I do is put the small painting in my pocket and taking it for a walk. I try to put it in different places. The only one that gives me any pleasure is a ploughed field where delicately and firmly press the small panel into the clay of a furrow.

> Then the painting returns to the studio but I can't now paint over it again, like I am doing with the other panels in the series. The photos, mere photographic reproductions, have suddenly made me precious about a painting. There is now some dried mud on the panel and I toy with the idea of washing it off. I also think of the relationships between snow, mud, pigment and binder.

> Throwing the painting into the lake on an overcast day completes the trilogy.

> In Rye, I ponder how to show the work in my solo show. I stand in the empty room, trying to decide where to put the little panel, a necessary footnote to the photographs. I try the window sill then settle for the floor near the door. I feel the painting may yet find new photos outside. And then I notice the floor: old, crusty with various materials that have covered it and have been incompletely removed, scraped and sanded back. Another natural relationship, this time also to the gallery space, even if it is an awkward one.

> Perhaps there will be other photos of the panel in a natural environment. Perhaps more of its difficult relationship with the gallery space. Another open-ended collection of images.

> Additional images:

> Related work: