Gavin Maughfling |
Artists Statement
My paintings centre on images of landscapes and domestic lives. In my practice the painting process is a transformative response to initial photographic images through which potential readings can be revealed.
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The landscape works are sourced from webcam stills of wildernesses or remote settlements. My engagement with these locations derives from a concern with ideas of the Sublime, and in the complex feelings of terror and awe which arise in us when confronted by landscape on an epic scale.
In these paintings I am exploring sparsely populated or uninhabited locations which I have never visited (though sometimes dreamt about) and which have been recorded by an unmanned lens.
Taking the initial still images as a starting point, I use the act of painting as a process of meditation on their space, light and object-field relationships. Through the painting process the landscapes become the arena for an exploration of personal significance and meaning.
The figurative paintings also carry layered potential readings, and explore degrees of ambiguity in their interpretation. These works derive from from a range of sources, including Nineteenth Century American college team photographs and snapshots taken by different people of their lovers, family and friends.
The paintings do not claim to be directly about the individuals they portray. My intention is rather that these paintings might initiate a wider reflection on possible meanings contained within the photographic image, on the act of recording, and on the true nature of the relationship between beholder and beholden.
My most recent paintings widen this exploration to encompass situations of companionship and shared experience, including groups of friends and family. They fuse landscape and figure; human configurations take place within the context of landscapes which frame and reflect the relationships to which they bear witness.