the process

The culmination of this work has been a bittersweet process. I had a lot of ideas I had always wanted to work on and resolve but full-time work and a busy and active social life precluded the deep concentration needed to create a series of work to my satisfaction. In 2012 I suffered a catastrophic back injury that required a major rehabilitation. When the pain was the most intense and I was doing the rounds of the specialists, doctors, physios, hospitals and injections I decided to undertake some photography projects as a way of filling the time and also managing the negative emotions of being in long term pain and not being able to function as you would generally. By not being able to do all the activities you would normally do, galvanised the mind to attend to ones you had the capacity to do. To my surprise immersing myself in the philosophical, aesthetic and technical considerations of the work was the best pain management solution I could envisage. The initial shearing pain and dysfunction was dampened by intense concentration on the artwork. I worked steadily and regularly-with rests in between. I had a very strong idea on how the images should look but needed a significant time to work through all the problems and resolve the work satisfactorily. There were some major dead ends, frustration, a lot of revisitation and a significant learning curve to bring the colour series to fruition-in total over a year. To my surprise I have very little recollection of the initial stages of the process when I was in the midst of the most severe pain. The work in this exhibition will be the first of a three-part exhibition program, revolving around the same thematic ideas. Most of the images will be represented in the book “Material Substance”. The work is linear in time and all subtly different depending on the locations, seasons and objects. I was indeed fortunate to have such a supportive partner who not only cared for me when I was hurt, listened to all the complaints and kept all the day-to-day functioning of a house going, but was also a wonderful sounding board for the myriad of ideas.