Repeat Copier

Repeat Copier 1/24, gouache on A3 paper

t
o
p

t
o

b
o
t
t
o
m
Before there was nothing, or almost nothing; afterwards, there isn't much, a few signs, but which are enough for there to be a top and a bottom, a beginning and end, a right and a left, a recto and verso1

[1]Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin 1993, P.10. 

I have begun to make a series of A3 drawings in groups of twelve; they begin with a grid derived from their own dimensions. I take a sheet and quickly draw, checking the boxes and catching a rhythm. With the lines drawn I paint very quick decisions, becoming quicker as I progress, the areas painted are made in response to the line and are not pre-determined. When dry, I wet the paint and release the shapes and spaces.

Repeat Copier 2/24, gouache on A3 paper

For several years now there have always been a couple of postcards in the studio of renaissance paintings, and nearly always depicting an annunciation scene. These are the current ones,

Zanobi Strozzi The Annunciation c 1440-5

Fra Angelico Panels for the Armadio degli Argenti c 1451-52

I find the implausible architecture in these paintings hard to resist, the flatness and fantasy of the inside out platforms connect me to the Lego buildings I used to make with a very limited kit as a child, and they lead me to the buildings visualized in Italo Calvino’s, Invisible Cities.[1]

Georges Perec writes in Species of Spaces, ‘This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space is to name it, to trace it.’ [2]

Spaces conceived in the imagination invite activity, define time; pigeon hole possibilities. The geometric structures in these paintings ground elements of the here and now, the real and virtual, the present, future and the past. They play host to movement. Enter stage right, announcement. Stage left, the response. 

In describing Botticelli’s Annunciation, Joseph D. Parry defines it, ’as everything is happening at once, the delivery of the message, the response to the message’.[3] Between the messenger and respondent, a continuous loop. No words here , the dialogue, proposal and acceptance are depicted bodily, though curve and expression.


[1] Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, Vintage 1997.

[2] Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin 1993, P.13.

[3] Joseph D. Parry, Art and Phenomenology, Routledge 2011, P.186.    

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, Vintage, 1997, P.13

Paris 2012

'Virtual space, a simple pretext for a nomenclature. But you don't even need to close your eyes for the space evoked by these words, a dictionary space only, a paper space, to become alive, to be populated, to be filled...'

Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin 1993, P.13.