These paintings were done towards the end of 2000 at the Slade. Only now looking back I feel that the way I work now is as if I have come back full circle to these paintings after exploring other methods, ready to incorporate other discoveries with this early style. The ‘painting’ on the left is mainly screen-printing directly onto the canvas. The image on the screen was that of a single chair. The final image is as a result of multiple overlapping of the single image from the screen. Now you recognise it now you don’t sort of process: from realism to abstraction. And I think my interest of the image has always been at that point when realism crosses over to abstraction. Some of this and some of that, more of this and less of that, trying to capture the image at varying positions during that cross over. As you will see the little experience that I had in screen-printing had given me the chance to make a series of paintings trying to capture the shadow. I always thought that the image on the screen in the screen printing process had something about the intangible in it that I would one day like to use, and did so after the Slade. Capturing the intangible shadow into the tangible image.
The painting on the right was hand painted in layers. I had used alkyd resin to separate the layers. Building up the painting and getting down below to excavate and cut through the image. The painting is light, almost see-through, something about the intangible captured in it.