I have had this recurring thought since childhood of a chair in motion. It is more than just a thought really, it is an elaborate vision of a complex action, existing exclusively in my imagination. In this vision, a chair is being moved up and down in a nonsensical manner by a mysterious character who is not pictured, but whose actions I feel and visualise.
The vision visits me in day dreams, when I am feeling safe and relaxed. It is familiar, precise, repetitive and reliable. However, this vision lives by its own rules, a constant loop that exists in impossible physical space.
“A recurring thought” is an attempt to understand all angles of this experience: the calmness I enjoy while visualising, the movement of the chair being pushed up and down, the sense of impossible physicality, the surrounding area and light sources, the feelings and actions of the person moving the chair, and finally the transition of the scene from the imagined to the canvas.
Despite the original recurring thought always being the exact same, each work shows a different moment or viewpoint. In the more recent work, parts of the chair are recognisable, in the earlier works everything is entirely abstracted. The more abstracted pieces occur when riffing further and further in one direction. Sometimes I’m working fresh from the vision itself, sometimes from sketches of sketches.
The works are titled in a way that, when read in the correct order, tell the story of the recurring thought.