Show Statement, Woodside/Braseth Gallery, October 2007

Woven together are elements and images creating compositions which use text as a background for the subject. Communication through the medium of text becomes integrated into the distantly identified background within the reality of the artistic construction. Distinctly recorded conversations and the ghosts of poetic lines reveal the feeling of nature when written and assimilated into the mood of the painting.

The observer travels through changing perceptions that integrate into 'reality', but do not become a mere synthesis. Perceptions remain distinct and separate, the element of text remains independent of the landscapes which are spontaneously created from an imaginary source. Specific subjects are derived from a variety of sources containing meanings and realities that suggest a presence from outside the familiar world of the painter and observer. The jungle intrudes into the suburbs and becomes the dividing wall between civilization and natural chaos. A wild force enters and roams the world just beyond the 'blog wall', it howls with words taken from the countless on-line discussions that rage daily with contentious obsession.  Anonymous contributors gradually reveal their identities to each other. It is a web of communication forming a perimeter of reality within reality.

Paper birds explore the canvas, the text and texture of their content is hidden behind the crumples and folds. They are hopeful surrogates, longing to fly into life. Nearby rest actual feathers while overhead flutter wings from foreign insects, genuine physical objects rendered unreal by their application into the painted image.   What is real?  What is reality?"

References to water saturate the newspapers spreading out in wave patterns. 'The birth of Venus', always born from the sea, threatens to overflow and dilute the air filled with the ticker-tape of love poetry. Portraits of Sarah and Rachel are both 'walking on water' -though only the paper water-  walking toward the shores of distant adulthood. Elements of individualism are woven into the wallpaper carpet beneath the life of each young woman. Sarah, the great adventurer, is standing on the Odyssey and Rachel has an exuberant mix of music, politics, underwater exploration and innumerable oddities. They are rising out of a jumble into the pure, plain, open atmosphere at the height of the canvas.

The flower forms are treated with saturated attention that express floating undersea feelings. A pink flamingo feather collaged onto the painted surface again asks the question....what is real? The flamingo splashes into the foreground ahead of the ever-present, non-stop conversation foaming up into the distance. The sea is used as the symbol of the subconscious and the unconscious, it is expressed through the liquid renderings of normally dry objects like flowers and paper. Those submerged subjects are exposed by the conscious, but guided by the secret navigation of the subconscious.

Written by artist and GWG, October 2007