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Stephen Carter

London
Abstract paintings that explore the dynamics of looking and reading.
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In various ways from late 2019 my paintings refer to the possibility of reading a text - as if reading were opposed to looking.

The emphasis on horizontal brushstrokes leads to a vestigial echo to lines of text, where there is nothing left to read and probably there never was. Meanwhile the suspicion of something being blanked out, overlaid or redacted won’t go away.

My paintings are often done quickly, while resulting from lengthy periods of preparation and are followed by periods of reflection. I detect contradictory forces at play. On the one hand a push for simplicity, directness, an emphasis on the unique touch of the hand of the maker, an openness to the wayward behaviour of materials and processes; on the other hand always something sited outside the rarefied language of painting to become an explicit touchstone. 

Each work comes complete with a date in pencil marking when the work was signed off. Cumulatively this suggests something like the temporal specificity of the diary.

 

3 Part Overlay

14 Horizontal Grades

11 Primary Mix Overlay

Payne's Grey Intervention

Intensity Overlays

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