Esther Hartley - current work

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Artist Statement

'I have always been interested in drawing and painting as an action; a process, not just as a means to create an image. Over time the process has become more significant in my work and the introduction of self-imposed rules led to a significant disregard to the image produced. This in turn freed me from compositional decisions and handed over the responsibility for the finished composition of the painting to the actual process which I have developed.

The initial stage of the painting process functions as a platform on which to devise a set of rules to create the work. Paint is poured and splashed by way of trying to make a mark or perform an action, comparable with action painting. The next stage involves examining the resulting paint effects to identify rhythms and repetitions in order to frame, fill or link related 'accidentally' formed marks. When these patterns have been identified, they are treated with fastidiously applied marks directed by self-imposed rules that connect them together. Every related trace of paint is searched for and located, utilizing the artist's forensic eye. Evaluation of the whole is prevented by the close scrutiny of the initial painting event combined with the assiduousness used to apply the rules; images that emerge can never be envisaged. Initially, polarity is evident between the expressive paint marks and the rigidity of the intricate drawing process, but ultimately, they modify each other and combine to create one image. The result is an illustration or map of something that is both visual and non-visual: an unintentionally designed composition demonstrating my thought process and decision making as I attempt to create order from chaos.

However, something that I do consider very carefully is colour. I am fascinated with how colour works in nature from a vast landscape to a small wild daisy. I use different colour combinations to recreate a process over and over again to discover how the result may vary.

One of my continual lines of enquiry and research focuses on the initial stage of the painting: creating ‘accidental’ marks . Development of this area will give rise to expansion of the subsequent procedure, my self-imposed rules. Researching the methods of other artists, such as Jackson Pollock, Henri Michaux, David Connearn and Richard Wright is a valuable strategy, but I am also interested in cartography, the process of doodling and the illusionistic effects that colour has on pictorial space and figure/ground relationships.'

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