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These were the first two paintings I made in my new studio space. As a parallel to looking at simultaneity, I’m interested in the formality and aesthetics of sporting violence, and how I can attempt to make it something ‘beautiful’ through removing the sense of fast motion and context attached to it. Again, this is something I have never experienced myself and can’t directly relate to, yet find extremely interesting. At the moment for the figures I’m using second-hand imagery from the internet and whilst I like the lack of control it gives me, the freedom of painting from a pixelated film still, it’s something that I feel inherently guilty about. I’m trying to figure out conceptually whether continuing to use secondary imagery is acceptable, and if I did use first hand material, whether it would just be for the sake of being able to say yes I filmed/shot it myself.
The handling of the paint itself is also something that I’ve been trying to push with these paintings, although I feel that they still look quite tame. I think I have a tendency to panic and work paint into a surface until it doesn’t look like paint anymore. Whilst this works sometimes, the result is a very naturalistic image, something quite safe. I’m working on letting brush marks stay as they are when they’re first applied, keeping colours block and trying to achieve a graphic quality alongside the more naturalistic elements of the work. This stylistic progression may not be as important as the thought behind the image or involved with the progression of painting as a practice within the post-medium condition (something I’m interested to be self-critical of) but it nonetheless feels necessary somehow in pulling my thoughts together.