The Realm Without Borders

The use of everyday objects as a figurative vehicle for my paintings has been a major aspect of my work in recent years. I have added some intentional settings to these works, such as refusing to use photographs and insisting on a ‘life drawing’ approach to painting objects. “Painting” in my understanding has a connotation of an act, a verbal attribute; many discussions around painting begin with the noun attribute of painting, but painting begins with an action, a simple understanding that the action begins with the body as the fulcrum.

From this point of view, I see the objects placed in front of me, or what I call ‘models’, as counterparts to the body, the canvas placed between us and the tools and materials used to paint as a specific ‘thing’ that assimilates the place of painting. This ‘place’ is concrete and full of symbolic potential.

It is within this that the painting unfolds. I make my ‘models’ in a number of different ways, through different methods such as juxtaposition, mapping, cutting, etc. I change the form of the object’s existence to respond to and contain my feelings, the painting transforms the object in front of me into an image in the canvas, the image exists as a container, I give them a face and character.

In the series titled Mindroom, I began to use photographs of architectural spaces, and in the process of painting I transformed the spaces in the photographs based on my own imagination, or added images that I called ‘words’, such as geometric forms or everyday objects.

It is not my intention to develop this into a surreal style of painting, but rather Mindroom is a conceptual set-up for me, another space outside the painting of the object series, another container with different properties, or a model of an architectural space built on the painting plane. As a new and ongoing experiment, the Mindroom series also responds to some of my thoughts and emotions.