Cavern Drawing

My work examines the interplay between man and machine using a drill as a prosthetic instrument to produce, analyze and master a new way of making paintings. Brushes become drill heads, equipping me as I strive to test the physical parameters of paint, using the motions of the drill alongside the guidance of my arm and body to move huge sums of paint across sheet aluminum. I then reveal mirrored forms from the aluminum that cut through my paintings, leaving lines and shapes beneath the body of paint. The mirror soaks up the images in the painting and reflects vague shapes diffused in light. "Cyberspace... Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations. Like city light, receding..." William Gibson My work is made up of dialogue and confrontation between two or more factors, for example: myself and the drill, and the paint and the surface. Therefore I have started to invite more content and references into the work using mirrors, lines, symbols and linguistics. Line and paint fight for prestige and attention in an arena of phenomena and movement. Through my research I have raised ideas and concepts on the subjects of cyborgism and post-humanity, relating organic and mechanical mark making in art history to my own artist spectrum. Research referred to artists dealing with the purities of the organic such as the Abstract Expressionists and Vienna Actionists, as well as artists using mechanically aided prosthetics such as Gustav Metzger's Auto Destructive art and Stelarc's extension of the body with his Robotic Third Arm. These artists share performative and instinctive qualities that feed into my work. I am inspired by the writings of Arthur C Clarke and Stanislaw Lem, and documentaries that explore the natural changes of the land, Earth and space. I also take strong influence from films such as 2001:A Space Odyssey, Tree Of Life and Koyannisqatsi, classical music, John Martin and contemporary painters Jason Martin and Jacob Kassey. I want to make pictures that have a similar level of intoxication and hypnotism as a computer game or surfing the Internet. With the rise of mechanical enhancement and evolutionary trajectory, humanity is seeing machines as a medium of transcendence, the occult and the arcane. I wish to revaluate painting in this technological time but also to discover in my work transcending effects and pure imagination.