Artist Statement, John Moores 24: Contemporary Painting, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 2006

Using the now ‘established’ abstract painting technique of pouring, my paintings consist of seemingly random, fluid pours of sleek transparent varnishes and opaque household paints.  The poured flows, which are often repeated, are interrupted by meticulously stenciled hard-edged graphic signs such as skulls, dice, flames, fragments of words and second-hand decorative motifs.  These contemporary logos represent both ‘high street’ signs and 17th Century Dutch ‘vanitas’ still life paintings. 

Literal physical depth and implied disembodied opticality emerge from the build up of these flat poured layers and graphic signs.  The juxtaposition of the pours and the stencils pull against one another creating a tension between seductive surface effect (like the flattened world of the digital screen) and the histories and techniques of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.

The signs allude to a cultural or historical commentary.  However, when combined with the irrational process of abstraction, a calculated agreement to disagree with the language of painting and its representation is asserted.  In a playfully irreverent way painterly craft is re-staged through the processes of abstraction, graphic decoration and humour, unfolding into a heady mix of the serious and the sensual.