June, Norma, Valerie, 2008, oil on board 120 x 185cm

  Statement:

“In my photographic work I was always especially entranced by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long” (extract from Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald)

Upon waking from a dream, the harder you try to recall details and events, the faster they disappear, leaving just a trace of a feeling that remains with you for the rest of the day.

 My fascination with the process of sifting through old family photographs of people who are part of me, yet quite unknown, is the motivation behind these paintings. Created from found photographs together with guidebook images and postcards, these compositions toy with perspective and scale. They mirror how family histories and personal mythologies are half- remembered, smoothed over, and exaggerated over time.

In trying to piece together and make sense of my own history I come across gaps and holes where knowledge has been lost. Sontag has described the photograph as “an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal[1]” and this provides an entry point to my work.

 Photographs ultimately offer limited information and their full story is not revealed. Made from images collaged together, mixing places, times and histories, the playfulness in the paintings creates new narratives and alternative realities.

 First hand research of artists such as Wilhelm Sasnal, Peter Doig and Mamma Andersson have fed into my work especially in their inventive approach to the use of photographs as sources and the fact of their process becoming integral to the subject matter. Films such as Mirror by Tarkovsky and I’m not there by Todd Haynes have also been influential in their use of non- linear, dissolving narratives.

 The source photographs are black and white, so I am free to introduce colour in a more conceptual way. The colours used have a slightly unreal, unnatural feel with suggestions of colour negatives or old Technicolor films. This feeling of colour reversal reflects the sense of “looking back” through time and dwelling on past people and places. The heightened colouration suggests a romanticised or hazed over version of events. Through the process of painting, the images are re-invented and re-told creating dreamlike, other- worldly states.

 The paint is applied in fluid layers, dripping and seeping across the surface creating a fine line between control and chance. The translucent layers, with the white of the ground still visible beneath, creates a feeling of transience. The world created is not a stable one and the scenes depicted seem on the verge of change. There is a sense of loss and displacement present and an intended ambiguity is felt which is emphasised by the loose, fluid paint.