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"This body of work is entitled ‘Singing Over the Bones’.
My work has always been image driven, images being the tools of communication, not just depictions of items.
The source materials for my latest body of work, ‘Singing Over the Bones’ are old family photographs. We all have them, they all have similar appearance – many are small and in black and white, out of focus, eyes shut against the sun, too much sky, dog rubbing, car bonnet and wall sitting, women is wide skirts, pinafores and ribbons, men in woollen waistcoats, flesh and bone, youth and beauty, in the full blaze of existence, caught in a moment, then forever afterwards dying away.
These paintings are not a portrait in the traditional sense – getting a likeness was not the priority. The photographs offered up little in the details needed for successful portraiture. This body of work offers up a portrait of me – who I am, who I am from, who belongs to me...
Acrylic ink has properties that became important to the development of the work. As a media new to me, it gave time for contemplation and discovery around the images. The photographs gave a strong tonal guide, and rendering the images in colour brought about a kind of resurrection. I started to experience smells, remembering the texture and colours of patterns, and bicycles and gates.
The ink does not blend well. Colours must be mixed, from sometimes up to six base colours, applied layer upon layer, eventually they begin to sink into one another. The more layers applied, the more surprising and intense the effect, increasing the visual depth and presence.
The ‘Ground’ used has a significant role to play, it represents, in plastic reality, the present. It is the ‘now’. I have allowed the ground to claw back at the images, to be gaps in memory, to hold only the parts of the images that seem to drift by over the surface. They are fragile and concrete at the same time, precise and vague, heart warming and heart breaking. They fill me with love, and they fill me with loneliness. Balancing the dualities is both challenging and satisfying.
I exercise complete control over my craft, I wrestle my medium into submission, and then, I let it go again. It is when you are out of control with the work that instinct takes over. You fling yourself at it until you find what you are looking for, you are singing over the bones, calling them back to life.
Searching for the heart of the matter, you don’t know what it looks like but you know it when you see it, when you hit the exact visual note that is humming inside of you. You know it when you see it."
-Catherine Barron.
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