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Having
spent most of my working life teaching and / or providing for
basic, particular, even sophisticated needs of others, time
available for painting has been sporadic at best, with often
very long periods of non-painting at worst, e.g. 1965
1990. My thinking
about painting as a sensory experience with an habitual visual
awareness of the various environments lived and worked in
during such periods, somehow kept alive a kind of magic
creative discipline within me. This is activated
whenever I now make the first application of paint to a
freshly prepared surface.
Lack of
continuity, however, has resulted in such a diversity of work
that it is almost impossible to establish any easy
relationships between one painting and another. On the other hand I
admit to a preference for a divergent approach - to painting
at least, rather than a convergent one. The former opens up
endless possibilities, the latter seeming to constrict and,
finally perhaps, to pinpoint only one outcome. (More suited to, say,
research in the field of particle physics). Now that I have more
time for painting, one might just detect some
intraconnectedness in the more recent
works.
Léon
Degand once wrote, The ways of abstract painting are not
easy ones... They have been followed, nevertheless, for
nearly a hundred years.
Abstract painting is alive and well and need never die,
because the environments in which we live and work, be they
natural or man-made, or both, teem with abstract elements as
an inexhaustible source of visual information to supplement
that already learnt from knowing how to look in order to see,
and not just to notice in
passing.
When I
put a mark on my chosen surface, it has a shape and colour, a
visual weight, and also a relationship with the rest of that
surface. If
further shapes are added, the relationships increase,
dependent on many variables, and according to my own personal
sensibilities.
There is no subject as such. It is what I do, and
how I do it, that tells me how to proceed. Up to that point, I
have few, if any, pre-conceived ideas. It is by painting that
I learn that the paint I use has a life of its own, I learn
how to control it, and how to bring the total to an acceptable
conclusion, if only for myself. To add more or take
away would diminish the acceptability of the whole. That responsibility is
mine as chief arbiter.
On the
gallery page there is a selection of photographs of my work,
dating from 1958 to September 2002. It will be updated
from time to time.
If you wish to discuss my work please contact me by
e-mail.
mailto:NiRo.Ainsworth@wanadoo.fr
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