Amber Josephine

My aim is to explore the translation or indeed mistranslation of the image through paint and the juxtaposition created when utilising the differences in historically formed languages of painting. Having worked on a tryptic of small and dense paintings I am now exploring a more composed representation of the imagery that surrounds me. Some of my paintings are figurative and detailed in execution and some ambiguous. I am attracted to the thicker than impasto shapeshifting forms paint can take as it is applied to a multitude of surfaces, exploring paint as a sculptural object. My love for the physicality of larger amounts of thick block colourful paint hold a physical weight in the imagery I am attracted to. Mistranslations intrigue me and are part of my process. I feel I am pointing the viewer in specified directions by matching images with specific languages of painting. Exploring the connections between each image in a painting composition creates a choice when representing images; the image is the first component I confront within each work and often the last, coming full circle. This collision of painting languages in my work is reflective of my process, its technical challenges, and the paint as a mimetic substance. It is also synonymous with the attraction I have to collage-like compositions.

Collage influences my selection of imagery and composition, from post it notes to my own photography, often images from my intimate surroundings, both randomly placed and selected imitations, for instance the studio wall. This influence can also be seen in the way I present my paintings, often as a series or collection dotted around the exhibiting space/wall. The pin board nature of my studio wall gives me an ongoing visual selection of imagery that maps my personal journey with art; it is varied, drawing on imagery from traditional past influences like Matisse’s Cut outs and presently inspired by artists such as Laura Owens and Jana Euler. My current influences are the concepts of ‘expanded’ painting and ‘bad’ painting.

Visual media can be translated into paint in several ways. It can be representational, letting there still be a sense of the paint and brush marks, or it can be recreated to the point of Photo Realism, transforming it into a flattened image like a printed photograph of a poster covered lamppost. What does it mean to make an image of a gesture?  I often use perspective in painting to add on to the physical manipulations of a surface. A Post-it note stuck on a wall, it is recognised by its square format and branded fluorescent yellow colour; even out of context scribbled text written over its surface is part of creating a representational gesture of this object. These signifiers of everyday familiar motifs incorporate more playfulness with found and appropriated images. The value that surfaces hold throughout my work makes me fluctuate between materials including canvas, wooden board and metal, utilising oil paint most often. I take ownership of the objects within my paintings through this mismatch of painted languages.