Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

When I begin to paint I never know where I am going to arrive. I think of the process as a two-way dialogue between me - what I put on the canvas - and what it tells me back. Sometimes it remains silent and closed for a long time. Sometimes things happen very fast.

The process is triggered by many different things: sounds, music, past and present, visual and life experiences, emotions, memories, just about everything. And what you see is the end result of all these elements mixed up in a strange alchemist’s way, with me as one of the components.

Painting is my manifestation of being in this world, learning, relating, experiencing, understanding, remembering, reflecting. It is about every day. It is the attempt to reconcile the grand and the ordinary, the things and feelings that might be uncomfortable or not quite harmonious, the things that don’t fit perfectly together in the aesthetic or emotional sense.

In my paintings I use the objects around me from my every day life: the kitchen table, the washing-up in the sink, some glass jars. But it is not about still life. The glass jars and other things are my characters. They are my actors and actresses performing a play that is unfolding in front of your eyes. My white table covered in a plastic transparent sheet is a stage, an altar. But ultimately the subject matter is not really important.

I want to think that my paintings are not just about what you see, but about what you don’t see. It is something that lives on a different plane. It is not tangible, yet it is enormously present. In my paintings I want it to transmit the feeling of something more, bigger, fourth-dimensional, maybe uncomfortable, spiritual, emotional.