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The Shape of Afternoon & Evening 2019

The Shape of Afternoon
Graphite, raw pigment on panel
92 x 122 cm  I 36 x 48 in

The Shape of Evening
Graphite, raw pigment on panel
136 X 122 cm  I 53.5 x 48 in

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Thinking about Mirror Neuron Theory, about time passing, make believe and imagination. These two pieces were an attempt at mirror drawing: looking at found elements of nature in my studio, allowing lines and forms to develop instinctively then recreating similar lines and forms on the opposite side of the matrix. Drawing for a few minutes, then mimicking the opposite. Painting, then mimicking the opposite. They are not an attempt at perfection but a play on curtailing wildness, at allowing the imagination to build an unhinged narrative. Although I have hundreds of photographs (Exploring Totem series) that originally inspired these, there are only two pieces in this series.

The Shape of My Tears 2019

Raw pigment on reclaimed wood panels
16 pieces
16.5 cm  I  6.5 in round
Installation size variable

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This set of sixteen paintings, each 16.5 cm in diametre, are the wood cut outs from the ceiling light panels above my studio area in the Marlborough College Art Department. I filled a hole in the middle, sanded the surface and edges, then gesso coated them before mixing a dark navy blue reminiscent of blue prints to serve as the base. There are many layers of paint and gloss medium on which the white paint plays, dripped, painted, wiped and repeated.

I wanted to create images that appeared both underwater yet recognizably garden inspired; to portray motion and the sense of present and absence. To conjure moments of joy with mystery, mirroring the human experience of connecting with nature.

Onto Into Above 2015-2018

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Onto Into Above #1-4, 2015-2016
Acrylic, graphite paint, graphite
117 x 117 cm I 48 x 48 in
117 x 213 cm I 48 x 84 in

In sit, Lamorva House (Woodlane Campus, Falmouth University)

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Interview below excerpted from the Tender to the Sea catalogue. JM is PhD candidate Jo McCallum. 

JM ~ Onto Into Above, the paintings. Colour! The colours of the sea. When we started this conversation, I mentioned the colour palette being quite seasonal, quite dark, whereas these paintings, you have used some of those teals, those blues, greens, even the lime green of summer. What changed here?

SM ~ These paintings were made in January. They were made for two reasons: I needed colour and I needed to paint. I hadn’t painted in over six months and I was starving for it.  It’s part of who I am, like music, or reading, or walking. So they were made in the winter and were partly a result of trying to describe to people about where I was living. I kept saying that it is a land of impossible colours and unbelievable light, and that was how I was describing Cornwall to people. I hadn’t seen some of these colours anywhere else except here. That, in tandem with the light and the weather. I wanted to try to translate those aspects into painting. So they were mostly done in the winter, then I added the white corner curves in the summer to give an additional viewpoint, a counterpoint to the colour field.

JM ~ When I first saw them I thought the sea is a chameleon! You’ve captured so many of those seasonal changes. It’s interesting that from January to summer you’ve come out of hibernation and away from this darkness. And you have shadows here. Shadow boats. Again, they don’t look adrift…they almost look as though some of them are beached  but they are travelling into this light…

SH ~ They are. In some ways the paintings draw upon photography. The boats being quite realistic and the white area is showing light refraction. I had hoped to make the central white area an ambiguous place, asking where the boats are going, or coming from. They could be directed to more of the same, or to nothingness, or to everything. And the shadow is obviously the same shape as the boat but it is a void, a gap.

JM ~ These are far more evocative of life and death than the other work; perhaps an imagined world. This is an afterlife…and a soul. And moving backwards or forwards, or emerging from it. There is far more of that quality.