Gail Troth

Artist statement

My goal is to produce paintings that paint themselves, that generate outcomes that intrigue and surprise me. They are constructed using a method I developed during my degree course in fine art, this entails dropping the paint rather than using a brush. Each concentric circle is formed by a single drop that falls into the fluid filled canvas. This impacts upon areas of the painting close by and sometimes the entire painting. This non-interventionist approach allows the self-organisational character of the paint to reveal itself effortlessly producing delicate structure and pattern that manual dexterity would be hard-pressed to emulate. As the paintings dry self-organisation occurs as critical decisions are made at the most intricate and intimate level within the paint itself. The results that arise by this method often resemble structures that occur within natural self-organising systems, for example animal and plant cells or mineral and crystal formations.

The structure and pattern produced surprise me as they are not strictly of my design but arise from an area not open to manual manipulation, this intrigues me and tempts me to explore further.