Panel 2 (Painting/Grass)

'Panel 2 (Painting/Grass)' are from a series of works made across three decades since leaving college in the mid 90s. The Grass/Paintings marry two schools of contradictory thought. On the one hand they follow strict premeditated ways of making a painting - strongly influenced by a second wave of process painting prevalent in London during the 90s. On the other hand, this process produces, a romantic image of a field of grass, a landscape.

There is a simple conceptual twinning of thousands of brush marks making up the field of a painting, and thousands of blades of grass making up a field of grass. The presence of both artifice and romance, speaks to the nature or culture argument that inhabits both the discourse of painting and the lack of bio-diversity held within a manicured lawn. 

On a personal level, I am drawn to these ‘nature’ / 'not nature’ spaces. They were the playing grounds of my childhood. Suburban fields in-between housing estates, carpeted in turf, stretched out in front of me. To my young eyes it was wilderness and loaded with potential.