this other thing

6 September - 2 October 2019

Liverpool Street Gallery

I’ve been making paintings about Eucalypt trees for many years now and I still have unfinished business with this Australian icon. I’m trying to come up with a visual analogy or ‘equivalent’ as Cezanne said for nature, or at least a small part of it.

Even though the pictures end up flat and abstracted they all start with some visual aspect sourced directly from trees through drawing.

These paintings also deal with ‘entropy’ which involves the process of natural systems reaching their peak then breaking down and trying to apply this system to abstract painting.

In making the paintings, how far can you push a subject away from its visual source before it breaks down, or loses meaning?

This pushing is really important to me as it keeps the painting process real and alive, even if they end up being ‘this other thing’!

— Peter Sharp, August 2019