THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 29th JANUARY 2021: DAY 306

New Painting: "A Sign of Life."
Oil paint on plywood block, 150 x 150 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 29th January 2021.
Part 19: 'Interpretation, abstraction, illusion. Describe what you actually see?.'

As I continue with my current series of paintings, I am struck by a certain surreal feeling which they may be beginning to engender. This developing feeling of the uncanny seems to me to be wholly appropriate within the context of my current work as it echoes similar concerns within the question of painting which I began to explore on previous occasions and for the almost identical reasons.  These concerns are of course to do with the spectator’s perception of what they are actually experiencing during their encounters with paintings.

Sometime ago I began to create paintings which exhibited an even greater feeling of the uncanny as a means to challenge the spectators experience into a greater comprehension of the subject and therefore into a more in depth a better appreciation of the subject of painting by challenging them to analyse their encounter via more analytical methods of perception. In doing so I ask spectators to leave behind their preconceptions of what they believed they were perceiving when encountering a painting and to engage with what it is actually doing to them.

To be continued…