20 / 3752 - Titinium White

The ‘Quadrilaterals’ project, presented here, represents a painterly coming together of process and chance. The process consist of scraping thin lines through wet oil paint that has been loosely and freely applied to a reflective surface, either glass mirror or coloured cast acrylic. The lines form a kind of grid, the notion of which is normally one of rigid or mathematical precision. Here it is a hand-drawn gestural approximation so never a textbook grid. This sits on top of the loose paintwork creating a tension of optical supremacy. Does the mind ask the eye to focus on the painted brushwork or the floating more structural grid, as they appear optically independent of each other?

The process then requires that the dry paint, from only the perfect squares accidentally created within the grid, be removed so revealing the reflective surface below immediately creating new tensions within an already complex picture plane. These random squares or quadrilaterals expose chance reflections of the local environment that are themselves ever changing as the viewer moves around the artwork. There is no control over either the positioning or number of these squares within the grid as it is a coincidence if the lines cross squarely permitting the removal of the paint from that area. There is also the risk that there could be no squares at all given their freehand creation. Whatever the outcome the process allows me no way of controlling what is the most discernable formal component in each painting, the squares.