Charred Head, Silhouette Painting, 1988

oil on linen, slate, wooden frame

183 x 372 cm

THE SILHOUETTE PAINTINGS
1986 – 1989


"The image is silhouetted by the colourfield which is silhouetted by the raw linen which is silhouetted by the stretcher which is silhouetted by the wall.

The deformed zeroxed image is painted in grisaille which is silhouetted by the bright but not intense colourfield, painted in continuous strokes by a two-and-a-half inch house brush which is silhouetted by raw linen sized with rabbit skin glue which is silhouetted by a two-and-a-half by one inch wooden stretcher which is silhouetted by the wall painted with white acrylic paint rolled on.

The appropriated and zeroxed Andre Derain image, painted in horizontal grisaille using traditional round brushes, is silhouetted by the bright oil colourfield of Riley’s Egyptian Series of fugitive colours, painted with an industrial house brush in the manner of Ryman’s paintings which is silhouetted by the materiality of the traditional raw portrait linen which is silhouetted by the box-like structure of the transportable wooden stretcher which is silhouetted and framed by the permanency of the gallery walls that being a white cube of late modernist proportions thus a frame for cultural transactions.

Taking care in understanding the decayed and spectral Derain image and psychologically coming to its being, before requesting its presence on another surface, that surface being a modernist colourfield, which is psychedelic and thus a hyperconformism to the binary system of codes which is then silhouetted by a traditional support of raw linen which your eyes can touch and nose can smell the resonance of history, whilst this is silhouetted by a wooden stretcher of modernist corporeal proportions which is then silhouetted by the white wall and cube of the art of this century."

JY 1987