limits and endless possibilities

A painting resists the temporally structured unfolding that defines music or poetry. Where music unfolds through successive notes, punctuated by silences, and poetry takes the reader line by line down the page, each word advancing meaning sequentially, both forms operate within structural constraints, imposing order on the experience for both creator and audience.

In contrast, the encounter with a painting is fundamentally non-linear, marked by spatial confrontation. Here, the painter exercises substantial control over certain elements—the concept, the composition, the finish—but must ultimately yield control over how the work is physically experienced. The spectator dictates their own proximity, focal points, and the duration of engagement. The surrounding context - lighting, height off the floor, labelling, neighbouring works - is controlled by the gallery.

It is precisely in these limitations, in the painting’s dependence on varying spatial contexts across potentially vast expanses of time, that the medium’s potency lies.

Two paintings by Vincent Driscoll

Within my own practice, I deliberately embrace this immobility, this suspension within space, to explore my core painterly concerns: space and movement. Paradoxically, it is through these constraints that these dynamic aspects are realised. In its stasis, a painting offers a spatial density that compels subjective movement, allowing the spectator to comprehend the work in their own way.

The artist then, serves as architect only up to a point; beyond that, the work acquires an autonomy, influencing and adapting to the viewer’s engagement across shifting contexts - yet always, in essence, a still image fixed on a wall.

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