Becoming Unbecoming

Description

This large oil painting on canvas, called Becoming Unbecoming, is part of a series that explored abstraction in the modernist tradition and was influenced by painters such as Lee Krasner, Larry Poons and Joan Mitchell. These are artists whose work clearly expressed the joy of putting brush to canvas and becoming “…entranced and quick with awareness, alive to the faintest nuance, the subtlest play of pigment, line and form”.

The title of this piece has to do with looking for that fine line between harmony and disharmony; the ordinary and the sublime; balance and imbalance; proportion and asymmetry.

These works are also experiments with using techniques that draw attention to the process and materials used in creating them and are not part of the realist tradition. In this series, I aimed to negotiate a middle path between aesthetic appeal and sterile abstraction; between the grip of the past and newness for its own sake. I also wanted to communicate the joy of colours, lines and forms depicted in oil paint – to communicate at a visceral rather than an intellectual level. For a further discussion about the role of painting and my how my work fits in,  please visit this January 2019 blog post.

This painting does not need a frame & is ready to hang.