Sarah
Key
Click on images
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Admiral
Brevity |
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Painting
About Rabbits & Death No 1 |
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All
Work & No Play |
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The
Captains Head,2008 Edited 3 |
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He
Knew What He'd Done Was Wrong |
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The
Anunciation Of Nutkin |
Beautiful
Crazy (Paintings about Rabbits and Death) |
| New Work by Sarah Key, 2008 |
| This
new body of work has developed from research that has slowly been
collated over the past four years, including the collection of images.
At least one image is used for each piece, forming the basis of the
painted image - but not dictating the aesthetic qualities being sought
through the material applications of the medium. The images are a
starting point, for composition and for psychological resonance. Some
have personal significance in terms of childhood memories and fantasies;
some are more removed in the sense of being ‘found’ images
(pictures from ‘Mr Potter’s Collection of Curiosities’
for example). Others are from primary research: photos of animals
having undergone the process of taxidermy, taken at Elvaston Castle
in Derbyshire, for example (A place strongly associated with childhood
memories of my late father). The methodology of the work starts to reveal itself in the connections that are developed between ‘the animal’, childhood fantasy, fear and resonances of both the filmic and painterly. Exploring death as a theme in the work, or the presence of death as an abstraction, for me is totally reconciled with the act of painting. This is not just because of the historical condition of the medium, but moreover a sense of trying to capture something utterly unattainable - to preserve a sensation. The paintings attempt to hold a line somewhere between the darker shades of this subject, whilst retaining suggestive and playful qualities. The images and methods used attempt to by-pass some of the clichés of working figuratively whilst retaining a very painterly feel and underlying roughness. Each painting starts with loosely ‘drawn’ depictions which are developed through layering washes of acrylic with mixtures of water and mediums. This process works on the basis of removing as well as adding material with each layer. The method of making becomes a metaphor for the content of the work, in the sense of finding an image through building up and removing layers: allowing images to arise from the approximations of the painting. Only brushwork and pouring are used to apply paint and the composition of images is finally resolved using applications of flat colour. |