My work touches on the duality of past and present in art in relation to technology, playing on the preconceptions of the spectator and importance of their personal interpretation.
I paint romanticised landscapes and buildings visually reminiscent of American realists such as Edward Hopper, dealing with similar subjects with similar application of paint but with source imagery derived from fictional locations.
In painting, I see the medium’s unavoidable history not as a hindrance, but as a crutch from which to establish contemporary concepts. Uninhabited scenes such as environments tailored for simulated violence are sourced from popular ego-shooter computer games, creating an uneasy tension eerily glorified in paint.
Paint is very important to the work. Although I investigate the relationship between technology and art through other media and methods, painting remains my primary discipline. The paint is applied loosely to the board and brush marks are visible, relating to the tactile quality of the medium and allowing the scenes depicted in the paintings to exist by hinting at the supposed reality of the source image, via the historical context of painting in art.