Phantom Industry (1)

One of a growing series of paintings, which in the spirt of awkwardness and contradiction, are made from fluorescent acrylic paint and a slight sprinkling of glitter mixed with matt black. On the one hand the colour wishes to be as bright as possible but is confounded and undone by the introduction of black. On the other hand the black wants to be a black as possible but is confounded and undone by the introduction of fluorescence. I'm also interested in the move from text to image.. The painting is one of a series of ongoing paintings which follow the same process. In some, words are still visible, in others they are obliterated. It goes like this. First, I lay down a stencilled text on the canvas (the text may take the form of a series of repetitions, aphorisms, mistakes, confessions or glossolalia). Second, at some point in the process, I overlay the text with varying mixtures of grey paint mixed with fluorescent colour in the form of four triangles, then repeat numerous times. The triangles might be suggestions of the folds on the back of an envelope in which something is sealed, or the forms might refer to a cancellation, or a hint at a deep perspective into a void, or out into the space in which the painting sits.