9 May 2025
Thinking about the tracks I've been laying in relation to what Jonathan wrote recently about “the image as a force” and how his work relates to provisionality in painting. While I admire Jonathan's work, I'm finding more and more that I'm not really aligning with the idea of the image as a complete thing to be exported or paintings that overtly engage with provisionality. I realize it's a fine line between those two ideas, but I feel like I'm sitting somewhere near that line with the approach that a foundational idea must always be there to start with, but a painting only becomes interesting to me once that original idea warps into something extended beyond the neat formal or compositional promise it tries to make at first.
So I guess this way of working can't help but relate to provisionality in a way, but at the same time, my instincts enjoy fleshing out those unforeseen moments once they appear. It really is like fishing (shoutout David Lynch and Jonathan again), but I guess I want to cook and eat the fish when I catch it rather than throw it back in the water.