As a painter whose work is often, if not always, hyper-realistic I get asked: why a painting? Why not just a photographic installation?
Jonathan Wateridge spoke about the importance of painting as a medium in the book: 'Sanctuary'. He states that ironically 'painting is one of the least effective ways of reflecting the now. It's slow; it's very old; it takes a long time to do.'. He thus argues that painting exists in its own timeframe acting more as a memory of an event rather than as a marker for the real in the way that photography does.
'On the whole, we still trust photography to be a reflection of what's going on outside our window, whereas painting isn't.' A realist painting, therefore, has the potential to surprise us and provoke a sense of the uncanny. This is something I inspire to provoke in my work and have often created artworks intended to blur the lines between whether the audience is viewing a painting or a photograph.
Amirsadeghi, H., Eisler, M., Blazwick, I., Cork, R., Morton, T. and Friend, R., 2018. Sanctuary: Britain's Artists And Their Studios. TransGlobe Publishing Limited.
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