These are a series of paintings and drawings appropriated from film noir stills and pulp fiction covers.
There are strong formal concerns with his paintings, building up 30, 40 or more layers of paint to impart a rich sense of color and luminosity. Crimsons and cool pinks are interwoven with warmer reds, ultramarine with prussian blues, the shadows are made of dark olive greens and deep earth reds and so on.
The decontextualisation of the image, the use of shadows and sfumato in the paintings, and the manner in which the works on paper are alternatively drawn and then erased to give them a sense of being eroded in time reminiscent of early Renaissance frescos, fractures the narrative and lends it an ambiguity of meaning.
The result of this process are images with both impact and a sense of mystery which viewers can look at for a long time.
- Oil on canvas, 2008 101.5x138cm 40x54in.
- Oil on canvas 122x91cm 48×36 in
- Oil on canvas, 2007 101.5x76cm 40×30 in.
- Mixed media/paper, 2008 70×100 cm 27.5x39in
- Mixed media/paper, 2013 66×100 cm 26×39.5 in
- Mixed media/paper, 2013 66×100 cm 26×39.5 in
- Mixed media/paper, 2013 66×100 cm 26×39.5 in
- Mixed media/paper, 2013 66x100cm 26×39.5 in
- Mixed media/paper, 2008 70x100cm 27.5x39in
- Mixed media/paper, 2008 70×100 cm 27.5x39in