Untitled Painting Installation III, 2011

Untitled Painting Installation III (side View).

My work engages with the idea of impermanence, derived from Zen Buddhist philosophy. The work is an attempt to visually create the sense of silence, emptiness and beauty derived from meditation on the changing nature of reality and the fragility of life.
The surfaces are built up through intense layering of colour over time to achieve physical depth in the paintings. These layers relate to the way in which layers are built up and worn down through the natural processes of time in nature. This process also helps to create a sense of “yugen”, an Asian concept which means “inexpressible depth” or "invisible beauty”. This idea arises from the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi - Sabi which describes the inexpressible beauty which things, especially natural objects, attain with the passage of time. It incorporates the idea of the beauty of imperfection and irregularity or roughness and avoids ornamentation in structure.