Gallery > SUSPENDED WOMEN

The Suspended Room
Oil on Linen
110 x 120 cm
2012
Walking
Oil on Linen
157 x 147 cm
2016
Binding
Oil on Linen
183 x 183 cm
2016
Lifting
Oil on Linen
120 x 120 cm
2015
Avenging
Oil on Linen
160 x 160 cm
2020
Spinning
Oil on Linen
120 x 110 cm
2015
Floating
Oil on Canvas
122 x 122 cm
2003
Unmasking
Oil on Canvas
122 x 122 cm
2011
Levitating
Oil on Canvas
122 x 122 cm
2002
Annunciation
Oil on Linen
183 x 152 cm
2006
Yellow Room
Oil on Linen
62 x 77 cm
2012
Rushing
Oil on Linen
91 x 91 cm
2010
Coat
Oil on Linen
92 x 47 cm
2006

In my ongoing series, 'Suspended Women', figures are as fluid as they are frozen. Poised between stasis and movement they are motionless yet inexorably pulled by an unseen force, simultaneously stilled and impelled to motion in an indeterminate yet dynamic space.
More a developing long term investigation than anything as linear as a series, these are works in which I'm drawn to explore the endless possibilities which can be exploited within a seemingly simple visual premise: figures suspended in space, their location an unknown. These figures are poised somewhere between stasis and movement, motionless yet inexorably pulled by an unseen force.
While there are various metaphorical ideas which could be drawn from these images, they are by design intended to be open yet opaque & potentially disquieting to the viewer. In making such paintings I am as concerned with the pictorial tensions of shape, form and content as I am with any definable, encoded meaning. These pictures are concerned with the interplay between texture and colour as much as with the many allusions which I intend and imply. They unapologetically seek to be seductive and beautiful, and, as with much of my work, have a consciously emblematic, theatrical feel.
In making such work I'm increasingly looking to a range of artists, designers, costumiers and performers for inspiration, in particular those who forge tantilising links between those materials we find enticing and erotic and those which might be considered uncanny or even abject.