‘It’s the first time everytime’ Noel Sheridan 1936-2006

I view all my work, not as ‘a painting or an object’ but as thing-areas where the energy of touch, time and memory within materiality is allowed to express even if it contradicts habit. I try to preserve the life force of that energy and my own creative integrity against what Robert Sardello calls the technocratic ‘death forces of production and consumption’ which insist on streamlined, absorbable end products.

My original painting practice expanded when I began to incorporate and recontextualise other material elements of experience (past/present - both the same) including, but not limited to, cardboard packaging, wrapping, old fabric, found items, clay and resin. All these textural aspects work as both extensions of and vital liberators to my painting process and to self reflexivity through shared agency. Improvisation and unpredictability are key and, as much as I can, I ‘allow’ rather than direct the flow in the studio where development of aesthetic style is countered at every turn. Fostering and maintaining the art of play through acceptance of smears, drips, accidents, etc., is an attempt to preserve openness as well as a balance between intention and chance. Development for me means unforseen results - that is how I know I’m engaged with the tacit intelligence of being. Because of the ‘unknowing and letting’ within my work process, final THINGS are filled with space for viewer relationships which may have nothing to do with my specific connections. There is no dissemination of subject matter or narrative, personal or otherwise.

In my practice what is ultimately co-created will always be some kind of balancing act, between structure and the un-nameable….. an ongoing conversation between my body and materiality, within the pictorial imaginary (which anyone can join).