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  These are paintings of things on top of other things. Proxies, surrogates, containers, histories. One on top of another in small piles.

Following the arch of a character through a novel is a bit like striding along a path as it crosses a park. At a junction of two paths, we walkers momentarily have a choice to make. At the junction of two paths are other walkers inhabiting similar small decisive moments. Catching the eye of another walker can sometimes be a little bit like a traffic accident. A pitta bread blooming with mold has some of the expression of a partially glimpsed face in a crowd. A ring of oranges is like an ancient stone circle, or the endless circling of revelers in Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time. The studio is a strange room where paintings ask questions of a painter.

The motif is arranged on the floor on top of a painted cloth or a collection of small decorated panels, which themselves might later become other paintings. Everything is seen from above. The painting surface is prepared with a diamond pattern or a skin of printed fabric. The still life arrangement and the painting surface are apparatus. These are the things that come before painting. The painting is the making that scrutinizes and suggests equivalents in dots and smears of coloured pastes. The picture is the event that stops short the making because it is already made. The picture is already made now because the apparatus remains.

I remember Rabo Karabekian’s embarrassment in Vonnegut’s Bluebeard as his career defining painting silently shed its ultra modern paint surface in the dark of the Guggenheim’s storage vaults. And I can relive Henry’s bathetic anxiety in Stoppard’s The Real Thing as he strategically selects his Desert Island Discs. And Olivia Curtis’ crushing awkwardness in Lehmann’s Invitation to the Waltz as she anticipates her first ball. Issue 13 of The Evergreen Review is where Barry Flanagan found a doorway that opened up to ‘pataphysics. And it is on the dais at the back of Velazquez’ The Spinners that Titian’s Rape of Europa becomes the set and players in the theatre conjured and created by the titular spinners.

These are paintings of small piles of objects. Things on top of other things.

 

 
Coffee & Peaches installation view  
 
The Incident, 2015
 
  Coffee & Peaches installation view
 
   
  H'm, 2015
 
Head/Coffee and Head/Table , 2015
    Cassanova's Chinese Restaurant, 2015
 
 
  Harlequins, 2015
 
 
  Boats and Buoys and Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, 2015
 

Experience, 2015

 
Coffee & Peaches installation detail
 

Coffee & Peaches installation detail