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James Bowyer

Date of birth 21.Dec.83
Country of residence United Kingdom
Contact painter.jamesbowyer@googlemail.com

I adopt a role of viewing my paintings as self-created narratives that become caught between the before and after of an event. I begin by mapping out lines onto the surface using paint. This creates another surface where I can decide where to put things and what might happen. I imagine myself inside the space, as though I am able to pick things up and move things around, until I have found something that works. I occasionally introduce people into my paintings who take on a kind-of theatrical role that relates to their surrounding pictorial environment.

When I add something to the picture, it could take several attempts to paint. As I begin to outline a space, add colour, or objects, something may cause everything to change. I find myself rubbing away these areas and re-attempting to paint them as a way of correcting a mistake. Faded outlines begin to overlap, and rubbed away areas expose the texture beneath old layers of discarded paint. They reveal a visual transition between a painterly history, towards a platform for something new. I begin to map-out more lines and objects. This forms an essential part of the picture-making process, as it plays an important role in developing a new painterly language that creates a relationship between the handling of the surface, and choice of subject matter.

As I introduce colour and more paint, the characteristics of the material, and its engagement with the subject matter seems to hold the picture together, and prevent everything from becoming just paint again. This is when I begin to build upon what is already in the picture. If it becomes overcrowded with people or objects, I will use the surface and the rubbed away areas to open up a new composition.

A room or a deserted landscape suggests another space that offers a way out of the picture, or a way in. They become overloaded with a kind of nothingness, with the expectation that something has just happened, or is about to. As odd perspectives, unfamiliar surroundings, and un-certain colours wait to be explored further, I begin to imagine what is happening behind a closed door, or in another space. I may try and reveal it through painting what I think is there, or I may just leave it as a suggestive tool for the viewer.

I try to make relations to other things as I create my pictures. A painted room, or an empty space, may offer a new enquiry into the technical framework surrounding architectural constructions, or what could be collapsing structures held together by the nature of the paint. As I translate them into these painterly worlds, they become broken down, rejected, swapped for paint, and re-created as part of the picture making process.

BA Manchester School of Art, 2008 - First Class Honours.
MA Royal College of Art, 2010

Exhibitions Start Your Collection 2008!, 01.Aug - 20.Sep.08, Contemporary Art Projects

 

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