Spirit Matter
Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind
Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg
November 2022 - January 2023
The exhibitions, spanning The Nirox Foundation and Gallery MOMO, present a range of paintings made in my Edinburgh studio and during my residency at NIROX, July & August 2022. With the Spirit Matter series, I am painting in reverse. The canvas is dyed with a dark black or indigo. I then begin bleaching parts of the surface to reveal lighter areas. The process happens slowly, in many layers, as I attempt to encourage an ethereal light into the artwork. The result is hopefully very open and suggestive of a numinous experience. The paintings are not depictions of Spirit, how can one paint the invisible? Rather, they are an evocation, an echo, a vapour. They point towards a presence you catch out of the corner of your eye, just before it slips away.