Caroline McElroy/ Artist Statement
I question the role of painting, and grapple with its aesthetics. Each of these paintings is the result of larger paintings being cut down. My goal throughout the cutting process is to question painterly concerns such as scale, composition and colour. Rigid edges interrupt the previous painterly flow, and as such I view each artwork as pictures of abstraction rather than emotional outpourings of paint. Cutting up the artwork is an exciting process, new discoveries and spontaneous compositions begin to cohere, and moments that wouldn’t have survived on a larger scale come forward. The brushwork is fresh compared to paintings created over an extended period of time. On a small scale, constituent brushstrokes become more prominent, and become the focal point. As such the composition of each artwork is rather sporadic, and some never fully resolve into a clearly specified reality, this is effective in maintaining a narrative dissolution and breaking down the idea that paint serves only to represent. The result of this is that the artworks are connected, and can be viewed as a collective, challenging the conventional idea of the painted ‘masterpiece’. The representative function of painting is seen to regulate colour, and exemplify a subordination, but by fracturing this singular image and encouraging ambiguities the usually suppressed elements of painting can be liberated. The medium of paint is exemplified, and the meeting of each brushstroke, the tactility and the plurality of each contingent effect is made clear:
‘The unfolding narrative must be broken in order for what is both extra and anti-narrative to appear’. 1
1 Kristeva, J. (1980) Desires in Language: A Semiotic approach to Literature and Art, Translated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez, Oxford: Colombia University Press pp214
I question the role of painting, and grapple with its aesthetics. Each of these paintings is the result of larger paintings being cut down. My goal throughout the cutting process is to question painterly concerns such as scale, composition and colour. Rigid edges interrupt the previous painterly flow, and as such I view each artwork as pictures of abstraction rather than emotional outpourings of paint. Cutting up the artwork is an exciting process, new discoveries and spontaneous compositions begin to cohere, and moments that wouldn’t have survived on a larger scale come forward. The brushwork is fresh compared to paintings created over an extended period of time. On a small scale, constituent brushstrokes become more prominent, and become the focal point. As such the composition of each artwork is rather sporadic, and some never fully resolve into a clearly specified reality, this is effective in maintaining a narrative dissolution and breaking down the idea that paint serves only to represent. The result of this is that the artworks are connected, and can be viewed as a collective, challenging the conventional idea of the painted ‘masterpiece’. The representative function of painting is seen to regulate colour, and exemplify a subordination, but by fracturing this singular image and encouraging ambiguities the usually suppressed elements of painting can be liberated. The medium of paint is exemplified, and the meeting of each brushstroke, the tactility and the plurality of each contingent effect is made clear:
‘The unfolding narrative must be broken in order for what is both extra and anti-narrative to appear’. 1
1 Kristeva, J. (1980) Desires in Language: A Semiotic approach to Literature and Art, Translated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez, Oxford: Colombia University Press pp214