Artist’s Notes

Every painting in this series has objects in it that were made before they were painted.
They weren’t sourced. They weren’t found. 
They were fabricated.

By hand, from scratch, and finished before the first brushstroke of the painting began. A china cup with a hand-painted scene inside it. The scene I painted onto the porcelain before I painted the porcelain onto the plexiglass. Two paintings, one inside the other. One of them visible. One of them almost.
You thought it was tea.

The titles speak the way certain phrases speak. Warmly, correctly, with good manners. Best Behaviour. Complimentary. Within Normal Parameters. You Shouldn’t Have. 

Social language. The kind that means one thing out loud and does something else entirely. I’ve been collecting these phrases for years without knowing I was collecting them.
Bone china felt like the right container for this. It has its own established language: delicacy, ceremony, the performance of a particular kind of care. I paint on plexiglass, which has its own quality: hard, cold, optically precise. The surface doesn’t absorb. Everything sits on top, exactly where you put it. Realism on a surface that gives nothing away.

All six paintings are 89 x 60 qcm. Small enough to hold your attention entirely. You are looking at the thing itself, and you are not.
The series is not finished.