solo 28 - focus

16th - 31st May 2009
Academy Galleries, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts
Queens Wharf, Wellington

The 28th Academy Solo showcased 11 artists from around New Zealand, each bringing their own solo exhibition and an opportunity for the public to explore a wider range of their work.

I was selected for Solo 28 late 2008 and spent much of the first half of 2009 pIanning and working on my exhibition. I was given nine metres of wall space to exhibit my 'solo'.

In this series of paintings “Focus”, I challenge the viewer to consider the works in the realm of both figuration and abstraction. The subjects are anonymous to me as the painter, without history or personal attachment. In my experimentation with abstraction, they are simply figures to be blurred.

The works pose the question: How and where does one view the work and what does one focus on? Standing back the viewer can see image, but moving closer and one begins to lose the image and is confronted with equal sized brush marks.

I have used a deliberate and distinctive painting process for these works, applying the paint with only one brush size, choosing only one direction of application and applying layer after layer, until the image becomes blurred.