Every painting has its own history; the paint moves and conceals previous decisions or layers. I use colour blocks to render 3d and images to flatten. My process moves back and fourth from Photoshop to canvas to open up visual possibilities, image to abstract and representation to ambiguous connection. Every painting has its own process preconceived and accident.
My concern is one of painting and its function. The process of combining modernist painting with non-related images may be considered one of contradiction. But Art or painting must reflect on its own past to receive a future as an art form.
By combining abstract painting with pre-existent images either from mass media or the history of art, the language of modern or post- modern culture can exist as a reaction or an embrace of society. This is also true of painting as medium in the world of technology and communication. This involves the matter of identity, whether it is in the personal, society or in the action of painting. Modernism and to a greater extent post-modernism interferes with our Christian and western notion time, place and identity.
Michael Stafford 