About Attractors
Attractors is a series of formal abstract paintings about utopian ideas as they present in the real world and in a dream state. Often I set up an apparent pattern, only to frustrate it by tiny degrees of shade, tint, scale, position or failure to repeat. These paintings function in such a way as to confuse the eye into seeing more extreme angles than actually exist, and by creating blind spots on the canvas that are difficult, if not impossible, to focus on. I see these effects as metaphors for current socio-political issues, such as de-colonization, racism, inequality and climate action. The move towards optical work is a natural extension of my interest in utopian ideas. I understand optical effects to be connected to the Renaissance obsession with perspective and trompe l’oeil, the perfection of the language of mathematics, and psychedelic imaginings of a socially revolutionary 1960s; things that are/were supposed to bring about a better world.