Strokes 1, oil on paper, 2025 [Paper Cuts 2, 50 MV, Liverpool – 30/11/24 – 1/12/24]

Curated by Luke Skiffington, Paper Cuts 2 was a group exhibition featuring a number of artists who presented new works on paper. This was a short-run exhibition to raise funds and support the curatorial endeavour at 50MV. The exhibition was built upon the idea that work on paper is often seen as being preparatory, as being a test for a more finalised version of something. The truth though is often quite different, with the easy accessibility of paper being rewarding for a maker because it is so forgiving, has connotations of being less precious and loaded with significance.

This work is connected with ongoing research question:

How does the strategy of employing iterative mark-making techniques allow for exploration of persistence, variation and error within painting, and what does this reveal about the role of process in contemporary abstraction?

It is a visual manifestation of breaking down an existing oil painted composition into a more schematic and diagrammatic version of itself. Where the initial version of the painting blurred ideas of legibility of process regarding the ordering of brushstrokes, Strokes 1 seeks to push the structured making of the abstracted work to become the subject of the work.

It also allowed for the paper surface to be seen within the main brushstroke focus of the work, to further emphasise the oscillation between material and content.