Doug celebrates 40 years painting in 2013
This survey collection of paintings under the title ‘Edges and Boundaries’, has been selected from my own archive with the exception of one painting from a private collector. The works display early influences, evolving visual ideas and explorations of a range of media and approaches from the first experimentations with encaustic (hot wax painting), acrylic, oil, and works on paper.
A common concern has been the changing treatment of edges and boundaries, with this being an emerging strategy underpinning the work through the four decades.
Materiality is important to me, by this I mean the media chosen for the work. Colour and paint film has to resonate with the feel of the painting and it’s reference to some thing whether it be the landscape, light, or the sense of space; suspending preconceptions and allowing the painting in progress to dictate or prompt the next move. Architectural suggestions at the edge can also shift to diffuse qualities suggesting atmosphere or layers invoking limited or deep space beyond the edge. Edge activity or working on the periphery of the work often allows for a depository for the tracks to be left: the memory layers. The task has often been to infuse the depiction of an outer reality with an inner vision.
In a small retrospective, it is important to select some paintings that attempt to hang together revealing somehow or other the evolution of a personal handwriting. In this case a subconscious arrival at the edges and boundaries of forms and the painting edge itself.
Colour has always been of interest and the sensuality of paint. Even though trained in the realist tradition, I was always pulled towards abstraction where I could get closer to the inner meaning of the work / it’s more unique character. The more authentic things that end up in the pictures seem to come from my own backyard. Evidence of visual phenomena around you on a day-by-day basis always seems to end up in the work in some way or another.
'dusk' 137 x 153cm oil on linen
'channel' 2013 oil on linen 97 x 245cm
'canola' oil o n linen 139 x 168cm
'at the end of the day' oil on linen 168 x 138cm
