Ageing Paint

This is the title of my first project. I have been really getting into the whole depiction or reinvention of how paint manifests over time. I have long been drawn to objects and structures that are showing signs of age and wear. The paint itself goes through many colour transformations, peeling back revealing colours and coverings from years gone by. I am increasingly interested in the notion of man-made structures being left to retreat to the immediate natural environment. Land Artists fit this bill in that their structures are 'borrowed' from nature and thus retreat back to nature over time. Man's influence is transitory.

In researching I found the work of Land Artist Robert Smithson inspring along with that of John Piper, the war artist and more contempraryDan Dempster, Tony Reason and Rosamond Purcell. The latter three all either use the power of nature in order to arrive at their work or use discarded, dead items to make quite beautiful pieces.

These images are derived from a tumble-down shed in Fort William. In keeping with the fact that I am attempting to depict features that have been derived over time, my work also has taken time. Layers of paint scraped back and worked over until a certain surface is arrived at. Colour relationships were borrowed from images I have collected over some time.