41. Derek O'Connor

Title
Weather Report

Year
2022

Medium
oil on canvas

Dimensions
198 x 167.5cm

Artist Statement

To be a painter in the 21st century is to swim in an ever-expanding matrix of new media and technology, special effects and photographic processes to manipulate and explore. Works of art created using installation, video and performance have become mainstream practices, removing us further from the essence of painting.

As artists, we are overwhelmed by a monstrous array of historical references, art movements, political, environmental, and humanitarian issues to draw on. Conceptually, you can be as tightly focused or multifarious as you wish. In this over-mediatised, oversaturated world of images we live in, it is easy for meaning to become diluted.

Conversely, my work is focused on the recuperation of anachronistic technologies – specifically books, combined with expressive painting. At the heart of my work lies a deep commitment to the medium of paint as a vehicle to embed meaning through a process of application and erasure. The question becomes not what to paint but how to paint.

In creating this new body of work, I wanted to move away from the barrage of disposable images we are constantly exposed to. These works force the audience to look slowly rather than scan the surface, as they gradually reveal their figurative forms though the layering of paint and the act of erasure.

The paintings become a visual artifact of the relationship between expression and paint, artist and medium, and as such, need little explanation. In ‘Erasure and Shape’, I invite the viewer to experience, rather than read my work.