THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 4TH JANUARY 2021: DAY 281

New work in progress:  Working title: "Turn around".
Oil paint on canvas, 400 x 400 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 3rd January 2021.
Part 2.

It could be said that my practice is diverse, my typical work has even been described as ‘atypical’, it was meant and taken as a compliment. Accepting that this is true I have always worked in a way that my work has evolved over the years rather that making undefined leaps into the unknown for no good reason. In the beginning I was primarily a landscape painter, as I studied and worked the idea of the landscape, and indeed of subject matter in general, receded leaving me just as a ‘painter’.

People are often confused by statements like this, they would assume that if an artist paints paintings which have no subject matter that they are abstract paintings whereas nothing could be further from the truth. Abstraction relies on subject matter, be it landscape, portrait or still life, an artist begins with a concept derived from one of these areas and ‘abstracts’ an image from it. If an artist’s work does not have what might be called a figurative starting point it is not abstract it is nonrepresentational painting.  This of course also means that all painting that does have a figurative source is abstract painting. No matter what the subject of a paintings is the artist will always ‘abstract’ it to make it their own, painters interpret the world, abstract in the context of the arts is just another word for interpret.

To be continued…