The paintings and works on paper draw upon motifs of personal significance, most notably from the natural environment, culture, and early memories associated with growing up in the Hawaiian Islands, and a family history arising out of Japanese and European roots. I’m often drawn to the hidden stories surrounding figures and events that appear in family histories.
The imagery is developed over long stretches of time, resulting in ambiguous, multi-layered compositions. The colours and forms often reference tropical and volcanic landscapes, modern skylines, dreams, and ancestral or mythical figures.
I use the creative process to imagine and create connections between my own, subjective autobiography, and wider contemporary, historical and archetypal themes. As a result, the work begins to generate a web of interconnected narratives, and viewers are invited to bring their own personal associations to the imagery. I also create short written pieces that allude to some of the themes running through my work.
The works are seeded with an array of particular, recurring images; for example, a glowering war deity, an ‘unknown girl’, and the dark silhouette of an aeroplane or sniper. Such images may fester within the painting over long stretches of time. I repeatedly develop, subvert, and restructure the compositions, burying and excavating these forms, sometimes over the course of several years, until the visual or narrative configuration I’ve been searching for finally emerges.
The accumulation of marks and forms that emerge from this lengthy maturation process creates a layered and nuanced composition that represents a distillation of many thoughts, decisions and actions. The original images continue to exert a subliminal pressure from within the painting, seeping up to the surface and leaving traces of their history.
September 2019
Filmed and edited by Bernard G Mills