The Divine Manifestation of Childhood Symmetry

Oil on canvas with collected fragments of antique papers
90cm x 60cm

My work attempts to challenge our preconceived familiarity with the environment that surrounds us, our placement within and the permanence of memories we access to balance our lives.

A quiet approach to the often misplaced and overlooked beauty hidden within, my work encourages us to slow down and consider our surroundings more carefully in order to develop our own individual take on a world we look at, but seldom see.

Natural form, structure, and colour are broken down, rearranged and reordered to resonate outside the normal frequency, offering an alternative pathway and a deeper subconscious understanding.

Through the application of layered paint, it is what I choose to add and remove that leaves a history on the support of conscious decisions, slowly built over time from memories, interactions within the environment and dialogue with myself about where I am, where I have been and where I may find myself.

Revelations often occur hidden beneath the surface – it is only through this struggle and my determination to keep painting that I can strive to understand myself and why I paint. My work is a transient and somewhat fragile interpretation of what we perceive as ourselves, our life, and our consciousness.

‘The Divine Manifestation of Childhood Symmetry’ is an oil painting that I completed over a four-year period. Initially started around my nieces sixth birthday and the first time she came to my studio to work on a school painting project and then continued to accompany me at the weekends to make her own paintings and let her imagination run wild.

The painting was worked into thus incorporating sketches, conversations, interactions, and memories, often being completely re-painted with multiple layers allowing small glimpses and fragments of history to gradually reveal themselves.

The painting serves as a kind of ‘time piece’ – like a ‘still’ from a home movie of our time spent together, myself as the artist uncle and my niece, herself being able to escape the normal structures of the world to a place of creative freedom, slow living, calm and ‘no rules’ for making, playing and being her true self.

The painting, like all of my work, does not make an attempt at any form of pre-conceived representation, instead offering an alternative interpretation of the moments we experience and the feelings they convey, true painting being a language of its own.