Modernist Alchemy

Modernist Alchemy uses modernist painting as a cipher to unpack the core problems of alchemy.

Alchemy fuses early religious beliefs, science and magic, and comes from a time in history where the three were inextricable.

I am interested in the moment of alchemy where science, religion and art all intersected and began to change the path and function of each discipline.

The techniques of traditional alchemy are equal parts art, philosophy, and science, a series of steps that rely on the manifestation of the impossible. 

In these paintings the layers of paint form a code that is both organic and complex. They are not translating a language but creating one, without the limitations of a traditional alphabet.

Building a painting in response to each step of the alchemical process, each object becomes a map, a codex that creates what is behind the curtained door, the next discovery in the process.

Formally the works are composed of layers of marks, objects and textures, a process where the transparent nature of each mark make it so that the final images emerges rather than being defined or planned at the outset of the piece.

The act of painting echoes the evolution of the alchemical process, moving from a heavy rectangle like the Emerald Tablet into work that moves out into space and functions more three-dimensionally.

There are heavy references to Modernist painting in the 40s, 50s and 60s in this work, and as it transitions sculpturally it refers more to contemporary installation.

Together the pieces form a tiny imagined ecosystem, a place where their creator is following a problem to its furthest point, and getting lost in that process.

These paintings are not about a solution, but the act of searching, and the definitions that form in the course of that search.

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