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ARTIST STATEMENT
"Painting has always
been about making stimulating pictures from the combination of colour,
form and composition, and the search for the appropriate, magical ingredients
for successfully marrying these qualities is endless. The stimulus for
my work is in the everyday environment in which we are surrounded. In
my mode of working, with many catalysts for commencement of painting,
I sift through these stimuli and create small studies in a development
stage before beginning larger works. These early studies are completed
on heavy weight Fabriano paper and allow for development of the drawing
together of ideas, with emphasis on the drawing. The work is rooted in
realism but with a distortion factor – a kind of sub-surrealism.
For the past few years
I have been painting pictures of the suburban backyard. I have sought
to represent this iconic Australian feature in its many facets: backyards
in suburbia are secret places; secluded, imbued with notions of privacy
and belonging, overflowing catchments of family memories. They have a
spirit of place, quite separate to our understanding of the front, public
yard of a suburban property.
In the fenced backyard we develop an attachment to place which is in stark
contrast to indigenous Australia’s relationship with land. These
private places are bordered to barricade us; they are places devoted to
the celebration of a psychological haven, a bulwark against an invading
world, and a source of private safety and emotional nourishment. They
may also though embody shadows, and fears, and bad things may take place
in backyards.
In many of the works a high viewpoint enables the horizon line to be marginalised,
or eliminated, and allows greater manipulation in the drafting of the
composition from differing vantage points and in the distortion of lines
of perspective. This series offers a narrative on living in suburbia and
may be navigated by the meandering eye to be read as a map of the memories
of our inhabited visual space."
-Geoff Coleman, August 2007
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EXHIBITIONS
2007 Jackman Gallery, St Kilda
2006 Linden Postcard Show, St Kilda
2003 Herons Gallery, Castlemaine
2002 Herons Gallery, Castlemaine
Represented in private
collections |
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