Stephen Andrews

I am a painter. My current practice explores anomalies on otherwise mundane surfaces – At the moment, specifically cracks and voids present on brick walls to buildings of local historical significance in Bridgnorth. Apart from their allusions to past events in the life of the buildings, I see these as real world examples of the deformations to planar gridded space as discussed by John Rajchman in his book Constructions; that is, intensive intrusions which seem to come from nowhere but which might take one somewhere.

My works, derived from large watercolour paintings based on en plein air sketches, depict brick walls as lines inscribed into a wax coating that has been applied to clear sized canvases (5ft x 4ft). The texture of the canvas is clearly expressed around the image and also shows through the wax to a certain extent. Holes and cracks, the intensive intrusions, are rendered in deep matt black acrylic paint.