It’s one thing to paint the appearance of an object. But how do you paint the idea of something? An idea might include some literature about it, its appearance, its physical structure described with maths, its biology, its history and your own individual experience of it. I’m interested in the way these different kinds of knowing are interrelated, layered into each other and connected. I’m trying to paint that knowing.
There is a Modernist, essentialist logic which can lead to an example of work such as an empty white rectangular canvas. I don’t go with the truth of things being something you can distil, let alone into a rectangle. In these works what I’m attempting, is perhaps the opposite of essentialist: I explore connections between art, phenomenology, science … all the complex structures of knowledge of the world. I’m interested in the way beauty can show up even in these multilayered investigations.
Or they can, most simply, be understood as paintings that are prolonged meditations.
