Original artwork description:

This painting explores a memory I have when very young whilst queuing to watch Star Wars when I was seven years old at the local cinema in 1978. While waiting to see the movie, which unfortunately I did not get to see as all seats were sold out, I remember looking at the billboard opposite the cinema that had been forgotten and left to the elements.
The billboard had all the previous images coming through the layers of paper, as they wore away due to the weather effecting them and ripping and peeling parts. I remember finding this of great interest, seeing the strange forms produced of the many female models and products, interacting with one another in odd ways.
This memory stayed with me and I now believe this event is the reason I am drawn to layering and the style of some of the work I have done through the years.

This painting layers many images of various feminine forms, all interacting with one another; intersecting, joining and interrupting to form new forms and interactions - each obscured and playing with the idea of marketed dreams and masks to sell products to a public. Here I play with the forms to reveal something of the mask and obscuring of reality, revealing in some way the falsity of marketed illusions that promise something they hope to convince one to purchase in the belief the advert promises to deliver. The stresses and strains are shown through the way the canvas has been stretched and re-stretched, playing with the idea of the surface as taut skin, trying to re-tighten a surface we are meant to believe is the most important aspect and sold the idea of the eternal youthful look, instead of the importance in wisdom and knowledge contained within, born from our experiences and memories.

There also appears to be an underlying polemical message about the idea of defacing the portrait, something seen in Cyprus during my six month residency in 2013 and the cultural differences between one culture and another - something seen more recently during the problems in the Middle East and ISIS defacing cultural icons.

The role of entropy plays a role in revealing the reality that change is inevitable and that one must embrace and go with it and not believe in a promise that can not be delivered as contentment comes from within.

The colours are born from the primary range and resonate to the iridescent range born from refracted light.

“Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.” Willem De Kooning

Materials used:

Oil Paint, Gesso, Charcoal, Linseed Oil, Dammar Varnish, Liquin, Gloss Picture Varnish, 12 oz Cotton Duck Canvas.

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