Paul Gildea NEAC

Statement

Painting straight on. No photographs, no digital process, no technology. Painting physical, about being there, stood in the sea,, fixt on a traffic island, being with the model. Like coffee, cheese, sex, cycling, having a bath, it's best done, not just thought through. This is not conceptual, ideological or idealised, this is the most down to earth, intense observation, before the light changes, the bus moves, the tide covers the flat sand or the children can't be persuaded anymore.

Lost in shadow or bleached out in light , the material weight of things keeps dissapearing, like the things themselves, fugitive, gone.Painting them, reproducing them, fixes them, like the bison on a cave wall. 

Methodology

Paints directly from life, oils on canvas, never retouching after the model has gone.