Mark Harrington. Degi-Degi. Paintings 2017-2020

"My work from 2017-2020 develops a language of lines into striated fields of reductive tonal contrast, aiming to deepen the impact of spatial volume and ambiguity. Paintings in acrylic and oil on linen and carton vary in scale from expansive to intimate, introducing multi-panelled compositions as polyptych extensions of the diptych structures underlying my work since the late nineties. Artists of prehistory searched for walls in caves and on rock faces. I seek materials to render the surfaces that I am hunting, like animals sensed but unseen. Paintings arrive as visitors, needing again a wall or chosen space for sharing. Nothing changes existentially in painting, yet everything is changed in the quest for alluring surfaces and their relationships with the spaces we inhabit."

MARK HARRINGTON