My work is about embodied perception explored through experimentation with the materiality of colour. By incorporating my body, tools and labour, I examine the idea that a painting is not only an image but also a materially tangible presence.
I pursue a material-based logic in the studio. I see myself as a facilitator, as opposed to creator, working co-operatively with non-human objects (tools and materials) as agents to provoke images. I deploy colour for structural rather than decorative purposes.
My paintings have provoked me to ask the questions: What does it mean to be human? How can humans function in the world the way that artists inhabit their studios? Painting exists in the porous zone between the human and the non-human where material substrate confronts perceptual image.
— Leon Phillips