Artist Statement: Philippa Blair

“STAGING PAINT” …………………… Philippa Blair 2009

Dynamic structures in these physically demanding new paintings create the dramatic ”stage’ for action and reaction and evolve from the practice of drawing as navigation-

Initially large sometimes interrupted and broken gestures with gesso and paint on canvas, taped lines and calligraphic marks map the new territory and topography from an aerial viewpoint.
Drawing the line with paint. Carving into wet surfaces. Loosening the grip of the grid
New directions from a linear and flexible infrastructure exploring polar opposites, accelerations of movement, resistance and entropy.
Weaving back and forth, uneasy harmonies of opposite forces and impossible battlegrounds. A dizzying array of choices and paths

Inspired by cinematography, dance choreography, theatre of the absurd, musical scores and the presence of Nature. A new working environment in San Pedro, Ca, with its unique light, topography, streetgrit, industrial port and transport system that never sleeps-
Improvisations in an age of anxiety, fragility. Nervous, fractured post-colonial times of friction, contested territories and natural, cultural catastrophes.
Stretching paint on canvas beyond its limits, challenging order, elusive, conceptually questioning, maintaining the artists presence.
Each painting is a seduction adventuring into the unknown

Starting from paper, roadmaps, architectural plans and recycled materials layered into ‘decollages’ then ‘blind ‘rhythmic pencil drawings of movements, speeds, interweavings and imagined structures in space
3D models from willow sticks inspired by the cane/shell navigation charts of early Polynesian seafarers who discovered New Zealand.

Physically confrontational and psychologically puzzling these complex paintings weave, cast spells, dream, fall down, standup, stutter, sing, avoid traps and regroup.
Complex’stages’ and sound tracks where painting is the main event and characters can reveal and dissolve, cropped, cut, abstracted hybrids of change and reconciliation.