Background to this Exhibition
During 2019 I created and installed an Art Installation called ‘Shapes not there….’ at G. A. S. Art Space see: (davea.hardedgeart.com). This installation was made with many card squares painted with metallic paint with each group of cards defining a shape. Each different shape was defined by being ‘not there….’ leaving viewers seeing the shape implied on the wall of the space.
The squares were attached to the walls so over time so these squares gradually came off the walls, one by one, leaving the implied shape increasingly ‘not there’. Finally, there would be:
Not(hing) there….
Exhibition Paintings’ Development.
The square/diamond has been part of my work from my degree course (1976 to 1979) whether:
Grey paintings
Collages
Contoured canvases.
Constructed canvases.
Which can be seen on: daveahardedgeart.com
This carries through to this new exhibition along with ideas from the ‘Shapes.…not there, installation.
‘Paintings ’23, there but not there maybe’
at West Studios exhibition space, December 2023. Taking the idea of shapes not being there from the installation, these paintings also deal with the vague and unsure.
Taking the square as a basic motif and relating to the square/diamond shape of the paintings in this exhibition was to increase the vagueness and using paint-space, one corner of a square can be in a completely different paint-space than another. Squares are often painted in completely so combined with the paint-space, leave the viewer to figure them out.
All of my paintings are hard-edge style but unlike standard hard-edge paintings with flat areas of colour, these paintings use hard-edge in a different way. Firstly, most shapes are shaded, not flat areas and secondly hard edges can fade out, colours blend, shapes blend, all adding to the ‘there but not there’ idea. The corner of a square can be hard-edge and look very definite and clear in its paint-space whereas another corner of the same square can be way back in the painting making it more confusing to connect a square’s parts and location.
This exhibition explores space and the painting surface at the same time, vagueness and is it there but not there, maybe’