Jack Stephenson 19th September
10am-5pm every day
Painters make pictures. They may be pictures from the imagination or from the world around them but “nothing comes from nothing” and, consequently, no thing can be painted that has not been seen or has not been internalised as part of a series of previous perceptions.
My figure paintings and portraits offer me the opportunity to explore the ways in which one can conjure the illusion of three dimensions on a two dimensional surface. The “magic” of this kind of painting relies on the painter’s ability to manipulate paint. I often leave areas of the canvas unpainted as this can give greater play to the viewer’s involvement in the perceptual process.This approach leaves much of the canvas available for the kind of regulating geometry that brings extraneous elements into, what one hopes might be, a coherent form.
Of course, one of the jobs of the professional painter is to make something that people want to look at and with which they may like to live. It is, therefore to be hoped that the successful painter, employing all his or her skills and cunning, in the pursuit of something that we might call beauty, will produce a work that prompts a positive reaction from the viewer.
Jack Stephenson July 2019