Grotto

The feelings and ideas that formed these paintings include the real and imagined sources of rivers, fascination with the Grotto as the source of the term ‘grotesque’, and the alluring impossibility of viewing the centre of the earth’s core. The original Grotto.

A painting to me is a kind of sacred grotto. A unique and particular wellspring of feelings originate and exist only in the surface of the artwork. A painting for me becomes a sensation, encapsulated in an object, a canvas and some timber that achieves the form of embodying a resonating chamber or sounding space for contemplation but that fundamentally never illustrates a description, story or banner. If it works, a painting is a lot like a hollow ikon with no gods or saints, but several lingering questions.