Dream with Open Eyes
A painting is a closed world, where I am the master, controlling what and who is allowed in. Nothing and no-one can get out.
Behind the few things that are visible in the painting are secreted all the things that are invisible to us in the world. This makes me feel safe.
Painting is a chore. I get up at 5, gather my wits and start painting. I sit for hours, listening to podcasts, toiling away at the unending task. It’s as mundane as sweeping the floor or washing the dishes, it’s dull and relentless, but it shapes the day into a manageable box, bordered by meals and sleep. To paint is to both appease fright and succumb to it. I am fuelled by an urge to dominate, a humble desperation for love, a need to consume this unknowable life that pours through my outreached hands.
Painting is the illusion of possession. I grab these bits and pieces of the world we inhabit and shove them into this unreal space, this box of tricks, this jewellery casket, and then I have them for ever. Except of course I have nothing but a mirage. How exquisitely painful, this almost-life. Exquisite enough to keep incessantly trying to breathe life into these concoctions, and incessantly failing. In the end, the attempt is everything.
I want to shut my eyes as tightly as possible. I want to close off all of the world except these few painted elements which I’ve sequestered. I want to draw you in with the sheer infinitude of brush strokes, the ineluctable realness. I want my longing to infect you too, so that your heart is touched. I hide behind the painting as a way of being seen. I crave connection.
For me, there is an addictive beauty in the transformed, painted thing, no matter what it is. This conjuring from thin air, this filling up of space, is my comfort in the face of blank fear. It’s the rabbit from the hat, the bunch of flowers, the sparkle of a raindrop, all the things that are kitsch for a reason, because we are all children drawn to magic, always.
I have a one-track mind, chasing this transcendence beyond the idea, the tricks of the trade, the historical resonances, the personal elements, so that in the end it is simply a sensual engulfment. A thing of beauty, however that is defined. An objet, a portal, a luxurious endeavour, a gift.