Helen Jarvis

Artist in Residence 2011-12

My work is informed by an interest in the processes of choice and the production of artifice involved in the making of an image. We still revel in the illusions constructed by painters, recognising what lies within the frame as either a manifestation of reality, or a creation of the artist. To accept these illusions involves the acceptance of what is shown and a blindness to the mechanics of the making.

I aim to make the use of the un-romantic mechanisms of image creation self-evident. Working from the banal spaces I encounter in everyday life and chance shapes formed by the application of paint, I manipulate and abstract the visual information. I look to create images which evoke the conflict between the representational, illusionary, functions of painting and the nature of a painting as a flat, fabricated plane. The painted forms shift between figuration, pattern and medium. Staining, layering, fading and dripping could be a result of painterly impulse or of aging and weathering. Dormant, uneasy space forces the viewer to search for information and purpose within the images; a void could be representational, compositional, deliberate misdirection or censoring. My work seeks to intrigue the viewer, creating space to be explored whilst simultaneously betraying the reality of the painted surface.