optimum info

margaret adams
Margaret Adams - painted light
painted light: room installation

 

Goethe wrote that when we are still and silent we allow nature to come near us. I want to recreate that silence through my work.

I have been influenced by James Turrell, an installation artist who bases his work on light and space. I consider myself, like Turrell, to belong to a tradition of painters who have explored the means of recreating nature through light and space.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when painting was considered to be an act of God, Turner was inspired by the transient qualities of atmosphere and light. In today’s scientific, objectified world, while nature no longer inspires a sense of awe, that we can still be found through silence.

My silence has a sense of nothing or nothingness. This may suggest oriental mysticism, but it is my own philosophy that is based on a personal need to retain a balance of thought. The idea of nothing or nothingness brings a calm, quiet emptiness that allows thought to expand in order to encompass everything. Lacking hierarchy, nothing is neither positive nor negative, but both. Nothing exists for its own sake -and mine. I believe that, at best, we are able to achieve nothing.

Having allowed this idea of nothing or emptiness to inform my work the paintings become silent about everything but themselves. Therefore exploring the physical reduction in paint and surface, in order to recreate a sense of absence and a sense of infinity. The results are very minimal surfaces that are intentionally difficult to see, and require a certain amount of probing to read. I want the viewer to become a participant. The paintings are not to be looked at but looked into, yet in doing so what may be revealed is that they are not empty surfaces. But are both absorbing the outside light and radiating their own light. In this way the works are physical objects, but without a beginning or an ending.

My exhibition is the result of these ideas and explorations. Consisting of three rooms. Room 1 is nothing but paintings. Room 2 is painted light, allowing the viewer to physically enter a painting of constantly changing daylight. Room 3 is light controlled that allow us to consider our need for light and the way artificial light is leading us into a false sense of security.

margaret adams | nur balkir | marion curle | julian davies | helen evans | beverlee foulkes | joe hewlett | j.m.quinn

 

Copywrite © 1997 mfa university of newcastle-upon-tyne