These paintings address the current discourse around the questions ‘What is painting?’ and ‘Is painting dead?’
Each painting in Loomings is the record of an event – an encounter between the artist and the flat two-dimensional canvas (with its straight, parallel edges). In this encounter the medium is paint – coloured stuff that flows, moves, and mixes. Surface, edges, colours, water – these are the material elements of the artist's engagement with ‘painting’. The finished painting is a record of this engagement.
Artist’s statement
“I select colours from the top of an everyday paint chart. I am drawn to colours that are exotic and excessive. Each colour has its own personality for me. Some colours are assertive, even willful, and others are shy, conciliatory.
During the painting process I help them to each take their place on the white canvas, but I am never fully in control. The colours take over, and the painting becomes an entity with a life of its own. If it is successful the surface will song - and the songs it sings give the painting its meanings.”
Ephemera
→ Lois Perry: Loomings, 2004, exhibition card