The work above was inspired by a series of photographs I had manipulated. I found a folder of old family photographs that belonged to my grandmother. They must have been taken around five or six decades ago. Most were monochrome but there was the odd colour one. I had the strange and unaccounted for idea of using pixilation on them. An image of a person on the television who had their head censored spurned this. I used Photoshop to achieve the effects. I did many of them and used many different and intriguing effects.
You may ask how did this inspire them as they seem to have no relation. An image of a blond child disrupted by pixilation conveyed to me the idea of everything being divided into cells - as in a grid. So I got a piece of material that was structured in a grid format and applied paint on it and made numerous prints. The one above was the most successful. I love the manner in which the colour tone changes from left to right. It seems to vibrate against the lifeless black background. I also like how it refused to print in certain areas for some reason - this was perhaps due to ineffective application of paint.
I was also working on gesture drawings during the same period. I wanted to make my drawing style a little loser and less formal and strict. I wanted to only draw the basics and suggest an item using as less lines as is possible. I wanted more vitality and expression in my draughtsmanship. I decided to combine both the grid and these loose lines to make the following works. I became entranced by using paint in strange and outlandish ways. I love using the card to remove it, leaving a faint hint of what was once an opaque stroke. I liked taking something so definite and measured like a grid and dragging paint across it. It completely obliterates the stern power it would have had I had left it as it was originally printed.
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