This installation is work on paper exhibited in the old cinema building yard, Montejaque, Spain. July-august 2017.

The space contextualises manual labour and the work of coal miners in my family, who repeated their monotonous, restricted movements in the deepest coal mine in Scotland: 610m below the surface.

THE WORK
The subject of my work is the process of making it, limitation, restriction and repetition. Restricting my materials and with a strict, mark-making action, I deliberately control the painfully slow progression of the surfaces. It is a twenty year investigation.

The mark is a horizontal line. The most direct I know.
The substrate is paper.
Binders are limited to oil and cold wax.
Materials are restricted to ivory black pigment, graphite and charcoal.
The physical process is the monotonous repetitive movement of making lines by bending over paper, laid flat, and drawing the line or moving my paint mixtures across the surface over and over, again and again.
The concept is gemination: ”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Heraclitus of Ephesus.

I invite the viewer to find nuances and explore, as I explore, the sameness and, in my eye, huge differences which unrelentingly have driven me for twenty years. This is my practice.

SURFACE WORK Series 1 (2017-2021)

SURFACE WORK Ratios series is a continuation of SURFACE WORK, with which I push my investigation into variations of the surfaces’ tone, dependant on the specific ratios of medium to binder.

It began as a series of ten paintings on paper dividing the quantities from one part graphite to ten parts oil; less concentration of graphite creating a light surface, with a darker surface resulting from higher quantities of medium to binder. Each piece is made, as close as is possible with similar pressure, weight, movement patterns, rhythm, tempo and process but, in accordance with the concept; with limitless characteristics.

As the process developed, I played with the quantity of turpentine and humidity in the atmosphere, creating soft, fluid marks or dry, scraping marks. The series, therefore has increased to include SURFACE WORK Ratio 1:10 Wet on Wet and SURFACE WORK Ratio 3:10 Dry.

SURFACE WORK Ratio 1:10 Wet on Wet

I am exerting more control in tonal value with the 2021-2022 series of paintings ‘SURFACE WORK Ratios’, some of which I am submitting as my images. I am mixing precise ratios of pigment to binder from one-ten part graphite to ten parts oil and cold wax; less concentration of graphite creating a light surface, with a darker surface resulting from higher quantities of pigment. Each piece is made, as close as is possible with similar pressure, weight, movement & gestural patterns, rhythm and tempo.

SURFACE WORK Raio 1:1

SURFACE WORK 7:10

SURFACE WORK Ratio 3:10 Dry (detail)

SURFACE WORK Ratio 3:10 Dry

SURFACE WORK Ratio 1:10

Art Reveal Magazine is dedicated to promote and publish independent artists from all countries and all genres of visual art. Each issue of the magazine presents several contemporary artist portfolios, interviews and articles bringing art to a broad public.

EDITION 53
Ayse U. Akarca (UK), Mahlia Amatina (UK), Mariya Andriichuk (Ukraine), Griet Van den Auwelant (UAE), Houda Bakkali (Spain), Dr. Don Bergland (Canada), Jessie Cohen (UK), Ana Carolina Estarita-Guerrero (USA), Robert Gray (UK), Pavel Korbička (Czech Republik), Alfred Krupa (Croatia), Juca Maximo (Brazil), Lu Mourelle (Portugal), Mohadeseh Movahhed (Iran/Canada), Roanne O'Donnell (Scotland), Robert B. Reed (USA), William Samosir (USA), Lydia Smith (UK), Siv Storøysklad (Norway), Alan Williams (USA)



Interview in Art Reveal Contemporary Art Magazine | Edition 53, 2020

In conversation with curators Dario Rutigliano and Melissa C Hilborn from ART Habens I was given the opportunity to convey my thoughts and art practice in this edition of the publication. The review is an interactive platform where contemporary artists share ideas, collaborate and display their artworks.

These curators read my work and asked such thought provoking questions that it was a enormous pleasure to talk with them.

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Roanne O'Donnell