These are examples of my recent series, Walls. Many of my compositions of opposites attract include various types of fences, usually separating natural and man-made areas. This led me to explore other types of barriers and specifically walls built defensively, such as security barriers, border controls and wartime fronts.
Such walls are built to control the uncontrollable, thus forming a symbiotic relationship that is very much part of opposites attract. Pictorially, I depict this control by the Golden Section composition as the background of each painting. With this in place, I can conceptually and perceptually develop the opposition of conflict, chaos and disunity in a subject.
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A storm-like effect of roughly textured surface treatment over the whole canvas reflects Berlin’s history. Against this backdrop, I have placed diagonal rows of precisely rendered memorials to those who died trying to cross the River Spree between 1961 and 1989, when the Berlin Wall was in place. These memorials are based on the plaques now in place on the edge of the River Spree.
Concrete defensive walls invite graffiti, and here I’ve set up an opposition in the different manner and intent with which I applied the paint. Though the message is not specifically graffiti, an aggressive stroke of black exterior Trem clad paint obliterates a delicately rendered surface in the traditional Golden Section. This contrast also reflects the purposeful satisfaction that often comes from freely daubing on paint.
This painting is titled after the film of the same name, which is based on the unsuccessful attempt by the Allies to penetrate the German Front at Arnhein Bridge in 1944. I applied the theme of opposites attract to the idea of a porous barrier, which lent itself well to the Golden Section composition and a randomly lit, roughly textured background of conflict, obstruction and retreat.
“All Fall Down - as in Humpty Dumpty – has led to another series of Wall paintings. The subject of physical collapse of even the most elaborate defensive walls now focuses on the inevitably temporary nature of such construction. In turn, this has become a play on the illusion of the painted image itself. Thus, in All Fall Down, randomly lit images are collaged onto an overlay of thin cotton which is then attached to a wooden panel by straight pins. Fragments of wall are both painted and drawn as linear ‘space frames’, including and excluding area divisions, like enclosed rooms or prisons.
Subjects of recent paintings in the ‘Icarus’ series, have moved from an exterior to interior focus and the confines of a physical wall have become those of the mind, attitude, imagination and behaviour.”
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