sharonkingston
May 28, 20121 min
My paintings are not about surface, they are about depth. They are not about defining, they are about leaving open a space for interpretation. They don’t give answers, they ask questions. And they are not machine made.
A frequent comment to me is that my paintings look like a giclee–an ink jet printed COPY of an original. Absent in my works are the brushstrokes and textural elements of what people attribute to oil painting. I rub that all away. I thin my paint and layer my paint to create the spaces that transport a viewer into the nuances of color. Texture is a distraction to this journey–as is line. And yet, the precious handling of my surface and the almost perfection of the plane leads some to believe that a machine created it. Not a defense I like to have to attend to when talking about my work. Fine rubbed down into a veil of color should be an appreciation of my technical skill and less a comparison to an inexpensive reproduction.
But, people want to see that remnant of handmadeness because that equates to –what–originality, I guess. And yet, they don’t want to pay for it. I don’t make giclees of my work. There is no way to photographically capture the subtleties in my paintings, and therefore no way to accurately reproduce my work. An irony in this whole dialogue.