Lauren Hine BA (Hons) Fine Art 2020

Swiping, scrolling, socialising. Feeds of continuous images have altered the way in which we view artwork. Peering at condensed pictures through a shiny surface, all sense of physicality, form and texture is lost. My practise questions the relationship between abstract painting and how it is situated within modern, digitised culture. I aim to conflict the fleeting experience of digital images by creating paintings which slow down the interaction between viewer and artwork. By means of gestural mark-making the work explores the artists relationship with the surface and the tactile nature of paint application; consciously constructing meaning through the process as well its aesthetic results. The marks produced act as traces of the artist’s thought-process, forming what Isabelle Graw has described as a “strong bond between the product and the (absent) person of its maker”: with the purpose of engaging the viewer both visually and bodily through a connection to, or understanding of the gesture. My work is a celebration of the unique nature of painting and its ability to contain a plethora of intimate moments between the artist and surface, shown visibly through gestural mark- making. Utilising composition, colour and varying methods of paint application, there is an elementof tension and awkwardness within the work. Lines slice through the paintings, forming geometric shapes and spacious planes of colour on the surface, forming a framework which allows the painterly marks to be the focal point. Flatness aids this by allowing the textural nature of paint to physically precede from the canvas. The gestural opposes the geometric in terms of shape, colour and texture.  Elements of harmony and discord juxtaposed, the immediate and considered components contest each other, forming a metaphor for the relationship between the materiality of painting and its erasure through screen representation.