Ivanhoe Country, Open Studios, Harrington Mill, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All my recent visual research concerns series of works.   L'Irelande Del Sud and the current 'Le Pays Minervois, Terre de Contrastes' play with collage, digitisation, and a mimesis of mark making.   'Blue Note 45's' are small formal inventions, 'Satantic Verses' synthesis painterly ideas into single emotional states, my larger colour field paintings continue in much the way they have over the past seven years drawing upon diverse physical, emotional and formalist concerns.  

Much of my work has been concerned with places and times away from home.   Some time back I decided to make a body of new pictures that respond to the environment in which I live.   Ivanhoe Country is the result.   Currently there are 18 paintings either completed or underway, each named after one of the 'northern' settlements.   The series will be completed with the addition of a further thirty two works for each of the central and southern settlements.   The title of the work as a whole is a humorous reference to the local council's tourist campaign.   I try to make paintings that contain a complete visual topology within them and each one is intended to be a pure invention. A kind of constant invention and singularity is what I'm after.