I   n   v   e   r   s   i   o   n       o   f     a      F   l   a   t       L   a   k   e

The title for this exhibition refers to my fascination with, and exploration of, a local lake; a small area of open water with continually changing levels due to its source, an underground aquifer. I think about the fluxions beneath, above and around the waters’ flat surface.

Fast in production, yet slow to appear, these works are defined by two kinds of painting and drawing processes; simultaneously contingent and definitive, that is, happening by chance and authoritative with a high standard of enquiry. I work in layers with swathes of paint and charcoal dust applied to various surfaces, the aim being to draw out the perception of hidden ‘folds’ in an intimate and familiar landscape.

Accidental areas of paint application assist in the unfolding of the logic in my painting, where the paint directly conveys the sensation of the landscape.

‘…..the mystery of fact is conveyed by an image being made out of nonrational marks’.                                                 Francis Bacon (1966).

 I paint by both wiping and adding to large areas of freshly applied paint, creating rhythmic and dynamic structures revealing multiple viewpoints within the whole, which have no respect for a single point of perspective nor with closed or static boundaries.

These paintings are dramatic in structure, rich in colour and ultimately deal with ‘making visible the invisible world of sensation, the real which one never expects and yet which is always there’.

Henri Maldiney (1973), ‘Regard Parole Espace’.

Penny Coss 2007