STATEMENTS

My paintings are constructed from a series of compartmentalised coloured sections; fragmented arrangement of hard-edged shapes and structures. They depict modernist spaces that seem removed from a familiar reality and appear strangely artificial. I am interested in the social and historical interface within our urban surroundings. I feel deeply connected to the physical presence of these types of architectural environments and making paintings is a way of interacting with and deciphering the hidden constituents of these dominant spaces. In constructing the image, I am investigating the possibilities of what instinctively emerges and imposing some kind of authority over something that is constantly shifting and indistinct, seeking an equal duality between some kind of solid, rigid position and a shifting, transient quality. The resulting paintings occupy the awkward territory between abstraction and representation, acknowledging the analytical process of their making.The paintings are evocative of vaguely remembered places, unpopulated public and domestic spaces. They are places where we have lived, worked or travelled to on holiday. They have a kind of vacuity that is evocative of the people who may have once occupied them. What does remain consistent is the solid, man-made structures that are the evidence of their human histories.

(Paul Crook)

Featuring anonymous yet familiar places and structures that might at first be considered as bland and mundane. Paul's work is concerned with drawing out small dramas and alluding to narrative through the manipulation of light, colour, surface and perspective. There is something uncanny, affecting and ultimately intangible residing within the work which seems to encourage a personal connection to a vaguely remembered experience or encounter.

(Craig Ashley - Curator / Artist )

The play of colours is harmonious and balanced. There is a colouristic pleasure to the works that almost allows us to totally detach ourselves, to be utterly submersed in the beautiful. This is the language and delights of someone who has made and viewed  abstract works. Yet the empty and easy escape of some romantic abstract aesthetic is not open to us here. Just as we are about to be consumed in the colour we are reminded of content, it re-arrests us.

(Tom de Freston - Artist / Art Historian)