gallery - the storystone series

I have called the paintings storystones because each of the works presents a composition designed to stimulate the sense of narrative, of story, that comes up in each of us when we need to explain to ourselves the ways of the world, and by which we create our own private mythologies. [continued]

TITLE: storystone i MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 706 x 400 mm 30 x 15 ¾ in.

TITLE: storystone ii MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 707 x 506 mm 30 ½ x 22 in.

TITLE: storystone iii MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 707 x 506 mm 30 ½ x 22 in.

TITLE: storystone iv MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 1m x 504 mm 39 x 21 ½ in.

TITLE: storystone vii MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 1m x 504 mm 39 x 21 ½ in.

TITLE: storystone vi MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 1m x 504 mm 39 x 21 ½ in.

TITLE: storystone v MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 706 x 706 mm 30 x 30 in.

TITLE: storystone viii MATERIALS: mixed media SIZE: 1m x 504 mm 39 x 21 ½ in.

Each of the paintings in this series has begun with a line or pattern found in a stone, in a natural formation. I keep an eye out for erosion patterns and fracture lines that have a sense of language about them, where something about the configuration has, to me, an ambiguity about it as to whether it was naturally formed, or whether it could have been created by human hand. I look at these found forms as gestures, perhaps relics of some form of writing for a language we no longer understand. From there I work with the mystery of it, composing the painting, amplifying shape and line and layering colour to develop a sense of, or suggestion of, a narrative, buried, unearthed, undefined.

Each person will "read" the marks differently, depending on the life experience s/he brings to the viewing. Each painting acts, in a way, as the opening sentence of a story that renews itself with each viewer.