‘Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion…Just as the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime’.
‘Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’, 1984, from ‘Travels in Hyperreality’ Umberto Eco.
'Welcome to my Garden' is one painting from a larger series with the same title. Some of the paintings stray from the given image that I use as an initial starting point; some do not. This is one such painting. It required very little editing and nothing much was added. I was drawn to the image at first as I knew it would allow me to make a painting that had no obvious focal point and would be relentless in its ability to reveal and conceal things in equal measure.
I have no particular affection for gnomes or the larger group of garden ornaments to which they belong. Earlier paintings employed such motifs simply as vehicles upon which I could project anthropomorphic ideas. Now, a suggestion of designed weirdness has diminished to be replaced by paintings with a more unemphatic approach. Their readings are made possible through a tacit acknowledgement that the centre can be weirder than the periphery.
