Edges, ledges, spaces
My work draws on our relationship to architecture, place and space and how colour conjures memories and associations to things previously felt and seen in private and social spaces. I collect images of curiously built and placed structures and objects encountered on my daily walks and travels by train to Sydney. These unexpected things often appear in odd urban locations and environments. They could be functional or non-functional structures and raise questions about value, aesthetics and perception about what and how we see.
Edges, ledges, spaces
My work draws on our relationship to architecture, place and space and how colour conjures memories and associations to things previously felt and seen in private and social spaces. I collect images of curiously built and placed structures and objects encountered on my daily walks and travels by train to Sydney. These unexpected things often appear in odd urban locations and environments. They could be functional or non-functional structures and raise questions about value, aesthetics and perception of what and how we see.
I have a black and white photocopy on my studio wall of Orange County Government Centre in Goshen NY. Paul Rudolph was the architect of this monumental Brutalist building, just one of many of his popular builds during the 50’s and 60’s. I’ve been drawn to this style of architecture as they appear so unforgiving, sculptural in style and both ugly and beautiful depending on one’s aesthetic taste. I was drawn to his stacked patchwork of rectangular windows that formed an irregular grid. When looking from the ground up these windows give the appearance of disappearing into or under the floor above. Some of the stacked windows are projected outwards and cantilevered creating a mesmerising visual array of vertical and horizontal rhythmic movement.
While this Brutalist building sparked an element of curiosity and provoked many questions the intention was not to illustrate what I was seeing but to develop work that responded to the architectural elements while reaffirming the trajectory of painting. Painting that can still surprise the viewer and can evoke through suggestive shapes, patterns, spatial dynamics and flat planes of colour both the familiar and unfamiliar, the real and imagined world we all live in.