Conversation 5
‘The bridge’, the first painting I started in Brittany, and on which I worked for three years. A picture that reflects the high’s and low’s, the peaks on both ends of this new chapter of my life in France, coming back after all these years abroad, trying to find my footing through painting. The painting started as a vertical image of a rainy cloud and thunder coming down. It transformed and went through a number of variations, changing directions as I tried to recapture my conversation paintings from LA but the light had changed and so had the colours of the world that now surrounded me. It is the witness to the path, to the changes I went through, the bridge between my work in LA, Conversations, and being here, and working here in Brittany, working through that journey with paint - visible acts and lines of deconstruction and re-construction criss cross the canvas, which in certain spots threatens to break the fabric, carrying the marks of the journey.
Inspiration
Ann Enright
- naturalism
- realism
the lift of the language
How do you find a shape of telling the story that fits the subject?
You move through an emotional arch - your arch is the journey of the narrator - as much as the events that are told. I like to put things next to each other, to juxtapose things, they are not moving in a linear fashion, but the emotional arch, the arrival at some other revelation, or surprise beyond the obvious surprise - those are the things I’m looking for in the narrator’s own journey.