From 1997 ...my paintings may appear to have developed as if they are part of a well defined plan rather than the intuitive lunges in the dark with a few cut and pasted observations that they really are... I speculate about the will to construct images out of splashed and daubed paint, to pare away at a stained and scratched surface allowing it to contain established painterly concepts of defined space and to compete with imagination on a free reign.
The work developed through an analysis of my painting processes, and ideas about communication and the development of language. Questioning the nature of the information that our senses receive and how we make sense of it. My aim is to develop a formal painting while maintaining a critical stance in terms of process and meaning. I want to challenge the brush mark as an icon of truth in paint, as an artist's signature. To subvert the brush mark as representation of shared participation in the moment, as form and content entwined in the paradox of now-you-see-it-now-you-don't.
I also want the paintings to stand alone as objects, so that they read as poetic images built in plastic space. Painted images expounding colour, form and line transcending the mundane and teasing the collective consciousness.
Matthew Kolakowski