Paul Haywood   1968 Born in New Zealand 1994-1996 Diploma of Visual Arts, ( School of Visual Arts, Nelson) 2004 James Wallace Collection 2005 April-May, Artists in Residence, Parnell Community Trust, Parnell, Auckland     >>EXHIBITIONS   The Found Object I have chosen found materials in order to demonstrate that they can still be useful. The poverty of the material is not necessarily a symbol, rather it is a pretext for painting. To find or invent objects from using these materials, which become relational structures giving a felt quality to satisfy the passions, I am constantly placing and displacing, relating and breaking relations with the use of mass, linear, tension and space, my task is to find a complex of qualities whose feeling is just right-veering toward the unknown and chaos yet orderd and related in order to be apprehended. My Paintings are very tactile, I love paint and what paint does, combined with the found object i.e. collage and together with matter I am at my happiest when I can combine these elements. I find it a necessity to paint, a kind of life force, a compulsion. Symbols appear frequently in my work and I find them much more potent when their meanings remain somewhat obscured or unclear, I mean for any symbols I use to serve the painting rather than have the painting communicate a message through symbols. Only I can make paintings that come from me and those are the ones I most need to see and interpret to my satisfaction. I think works of art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life. Art is one of the last oases of freedom, in that it still has the capacity to make people think on an individual level. My work can be read in several different ways, by giving things a purely allusive character, one creates more scope for the associations I want to trigger off in the viewer, the viewer is forced in a way to use their imagination, by providing the barest of clues the viewer becomes involved directly into the creative act and is confronted with the problems of the artist. Initially after performing the act of sacrilege on the pure white surface of the canvas, I work relatively quickly to block out any rational thought, the effort of concentration is accompanied by an anxiety which helps to stimulate my imagination, I set myself time limits for problem solving as a catalyst for anxiety, it is only when time is running out, that panic sets in, spontaneity takes over to form revelation. Only then when I am satisfied with the initial mark making I can step away and view the painting with fresh eyes. When a dialogue emerges between the painting and myself I tend to slow things down and work more on detail, always communicating with the work until it is complete. I think a certain amount of solitude is necessary if one is determined to do something really creative. Individual decisions are very inportant in one's work. Fidelity to yourself, inside the studio and out is the most important thing to an artist. Know thy self.