20 Books=20 Paintings
The possibilities of painting in crime-fiction...
18 FEB 2021
Great elation with the completion of the series, paintings spawned from the crime-fiction that I read incessantly. A three-year project that took me deeper into painting, with many moments of pleasure, despair and surprise. In the search for ideas for paintings, many books were read, many were rejected, many favourite authors didn't make the cut.
Working in series brings in a competitive element: the recent reworkings have brought greater clarity to several of the pieces. Now there are no more brushmarks, adjustments to make, no more scouring the pages of the novels for further possibilities. Instead we have the exciting anticipation of seeing the series together for the first time in the beautiful space at Linden Hall Studio 26 June - 24 July 2021.
’20 Books = 20 Paintings’ celebrates the act of reading, the twin canvas-format referencing the physicality of books, of holding, turning pages. But these are paintings, books that don’t close. In the spirit of the genre of crime-fiction, I have deliberately withheld the identity of the source novels, until the opening day of the exhibition at Linden Hall, leaving a space for the viewer to become a detective themselves in interpreting the clues in the imagery, palette and titles. If they wish...