TEXTS
My aim as an artist is to delight the senses, to discover new forms and to impart knowledge through art. I arrive at my ideas for paintings by way of sensory experiences and by way of reflection. Painting to me is an important component of an on-going personal and social dialogue because it invariably synthesises sense perceptions with cognitive reflections and visually elucidates how the mind is employed vis-a-vis the ideas and perceptions it has got. Art has always been one of the principal tools through which I have come to understand myself and the world in which I live.
My experiments in art are primarily concerned with figurative modes of painting. My faith in the potential of the figurative tradition within a modern context stems from my conviction that the expressive subjects of the past must necessarily be incorporated into visualisations of the present if art is to retain elements of our cultural, historical and spiritual heritage.
Early and on-going encounters with old masters (such as Michelangelo, Rubens, Delacroix, Tintoretto and El Greco) instilled within me a strong desire to create images whose visual impact lies in their symbolic and narrative potential and has led me to use the human figure as the substrate for my paintings. More recently, my work aims to investigate the possibilities hidden amidst the junctures of materials, formal structures, and heterogeneous approaches to figuration.
To support my practice I have engaged extensively with theories on the origins of cultural identity, symbolic systems, theological knowledge, which Aristotle described as 'knowledge of things that have both independent being and freedom from change', and ideas and theories surrounding allegorical modes of representation. Artists whose ideas and conceptual frameworks I endorse include – but extend far beyond - Jonas Burgert, Kitaj, Chagall, Daniel Richter, Breughel, Frank Stella, Neo Rauch and Anselm Kiefer.
My ambition for the future is to marry abstract and figurative modes of expression; to develop a complex, integrative visual language that has the potential to assimilate new perspectives, to merge the old and the new and has the ability to resonate with a wide audience.
MEMOS FROM JULIAN T.