THE MEDIUM

The artistic preoccupation is with the medium itself: the snapshot. It is the material from which a ‘painting’ is created which partakes of the documentary (the subject-matter of the photograph, often a detail) and the imagination (the created abstract image which yet seeks to place the completed work in that which was not photographed).

THE FORMAL ELEMENT

reflects the essence of the subject matter. Thus the cog-wheel shape dominating the MILL CYCLE is about the mill stone being driven by huge cog-wheels. It also hints at the organic shape of the spice itself. It is both machinery as well as plant-flower. The shape also evokes an image of a stained glass window (rose) to reflect the extraordinary beauty of the Mill interior.

In the BANKSIDE POWER STATION CYCLE this formal element re-appears to make a connection to the sources of power i.e. water and the water-wheel, the sun, machinery. A triptych has, as its centrepiece, the turbine. Here two formal elements combine: the cog-wheel shape (turbine and machinery) with the triptych to reflect the cathedral-like quality of the building. Other formal elements reflect the interior structures, such as gangways, vertiginous spaces.

CHOICE OF SUBJECT MATTER

It is concered with loss, memory and transformation (from Power Station to Tate Modern, from Mill to luxury flats). The work is thus as much about the changes occurring along the Thames, as it is about the “transformation of snapshot into medium into painting”.