Robert McAdam

Artist statement

I paint fairly intuitively with a 'starting point' but without a fixed idea of how the end product will look. I don't spend much time worrying, as is the current vogue, about being 'contemporary', 'cutting edge' or reading books by continental theoreticians. Rather, my practice is informed somewhat by literature, films & direct experience (usually of the natural world, although this sometimes emerges in the painting as a dystopia rather than an idyll.) Ideally, the painting will be worked on with such intensity (often at night), until it takes on a life of its own. The establishment of pictorial space, marks and colour schema should feel fresh. I won't have a feeling of deja vu that 'I've painted this before'. Often, however, the painting begins life with a promise of self realisation dangling like a carrot, then at some point during its making, I cross a line where the painting is more than half way finished and no longer has that potential (a bit like a people's revolution in a Latin American country which goes tits up.) The tendency is for the paintings which I consider to be 'good' to be the ones in which I haven't let conceits about 'meaning', 'content' and 'subject matter' dictate the painting's evolution. Instead, I've concentrated on trying to get the pictorial elements working together in harmony. Intuition and harmony is what I strive for, both in life and in art.