Noticing and Notation (on being affected and deciding to paint)

Considering the potential of critical observation, the application of pigment, and the function of surface, this thesis project is a series of observations from life. This conceptual body of work consists of paintings, drawings, and artist’s books. I am interrogating material value systems and engaging with the act of collecting. The recorded items include the minute, the preliminary, the ephemeral, and the peculiar. Contingent on the impulse to understand and record, the subject of the work is inquiry. Within the act of study, representational imaging occurs without the influence of the camera as a tool. This serves to strain the relationship between a captured moment and contemporary systems of image consumption. Affected by the labour and time involved in rendering, the paintings and drawings are a record to the capacity of a moment. These spaces left undone are for breath, for being made aware of nothingness, and to contextualize noticing. The painted images are grasping at the poetics of the everyday, and their materiality subsequently references a body in space.