Station

"My recent paintings seem to fall into two groups. Although they are populated by similar shapes and compositional concerns, the impulse to make them, above and beyond the basic “hey lets paint”, feels distinctly different. Some are direct responses to places I am seeing on my travels on a regular basis. I try to dissect these places so that the final painting feels like something you can visually inhabit. The end result probably bares very little resemblance to the actual place, and because my guiding concept is purely subjective, may only feel like the spot to me. What is left is a result obviously of the process and hopefully something that you can read on a number of levels. What is important to me is that the painting have a sense of place, and some gravitational pull or engagement with the viewer. Without sounding facetious, these are paintings to look at. They don't have any intention other than splitting your initial gaze into component parts and, when absorbed, offer some locomotive pleasure in reconstructing something whole from them." The other impulse that is evident here is even more subjective, and if the previous place oriented one as working from the eyes out into the world, then these paintings are about looking into an imaginary space that generates shapes. While these places seem to exist in the same perspective strata that is in our experience of the real world, there is not any real idea that is concrete enough to mention other than the need to make a picture that is a direct response to the feeling of just being. I have given them names like Net and Front because that is the feeling they have as responses to locating a physical sensation within a pictorial place that is landscape. I have a medical dictionary for children that has pictorial representations of physical ailments or sensations such as Fever or Nausea and these are dramatized in a heavy-handed landscape of droopy trees and lakes of fire etc. I feel I am trying to do this only with sensations that are a bit more marginal.

I hope that these paintings are positive and visually enjoyable. I had thought about the term Colour Gym as a possible term to give them meaning or flavour, and also often think that in their making they bare some resemblance to arranging flowers, even though I've never done any serious flower arranging."

- Gary Evans,
August 2003