Elusion # 3

This painting is the third, increasingly dark and intense, in a series that is an extension of a previous body of work which explores symbolic attributes of mirrors, plays with their definition and questions what they reflect. It makes reference to elaborate baroque mirrors seen in religious and secular buildings but plays with and disrupts visual expectations of light source and transparency. It invites scrutiny, even self-examination but aims to deceive and evade capture. The systems of process, colour progression and grouping which govern the development of the painting ensure subtle asymmetries and colour combinations and thereby celebrate the particularity of painting in an era of technical imaging. The aesthetic qualities of the work are partly dependant on the very materiality of paint and its application. The flat areas in the paintings are applied in acrylic paint while the rest of the canvas is worked using a wet-into-wet oil painting process.