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Paul Mckenna
I seek to produce images in which elegance and economy of formal structure give rise to powerful emotional resonance. My influences are many and varied, ranging from Japanese and Chinese art to Vermeer and Bruegel, to Cezanne and Cubism, to Klee and Matisse, to Abstract Expressionism, and to the painters of the St. Ives School. A key aspect of much of my more recent work has been the endeavor to achieve a degree of perceptual ambiguity which will allow an image to maintain a balance between the recognizable and the illegible, simultaneously suggesting possible interpretations whilst discouraging any definitive reading which would 'close down', or de-mystify and thereby de-energize, the image. Steering in this way between the conventional and the mysterious I hope to promote a more refined and vital condition of seeing – and it is this purified act of seeing, with all that it implies, which is the real subject of my work. My art is informed by my longstanding interest in philosophical and psychological theories of perception and cognition, and particularly by my inquiry into Buddhist ideas relating to the nature of the self and it's relation to the world. One of my main preoccupations is the exploration of the intrinsic tension which exists between the individual – person, thing, idea; any apparently self-consistent whole – and its context. Where, and indeed what, are the boundaries of things? To what extent is a figure actually independent of its background; to what degree merely a part, a function, of that background? I see my images as inhabiting a border territory, a shadowy interface, in which individuality and separateness are obscurely woven into a larger contextual fabric; as representing the invariably complex and equivocal relationships which exist between lesser and greater wholes. Generally, I conceive of my work as an attempt to translate intimations of the deeper workings of our experience of the world into an aesthetic and spiritual equivalent. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2007 No. 9 The Gallery, Birmingham 2005-7 State of the Art Gallery, Notting Hill, London 2004 'Lights & Veils', Bull Yard Gallery, Nottingham 2000 The Works Gallery, Birmingham 1999 The Custard Factory, Birmingham 1995 Gallery 6, Ironbridge 1994/95 Ikon Gallery's touring exhibition, 'Fragments' (various) Royal Birmingham Society of Artists SELECTED COLLECTIONS Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham Collection of Terence Trent d’Arby Private collections in London and Los Angeles EDUCATION 1990-1993 University of Central England - BA(Hons)Degree Fine Art 1988-1990 Bournville College of Art - Foundation in Art and Design | |||||
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