About Jason Starkie

I draw from both abstract and representational traditions in painting, fashioning compositions which are meditations on the time and place that I am in.  My paintings are presented as a vehicle for reflection by the viewer.  By turning the canvas as I work, I reinforce the design value of representational imagery, undermining a static reading of the works.

I start painting a single color or fade over the entire surface imposing a compositional unity and furthering the illusion of depth, generally I then paint a traditionally abstract layer of paint over the canvas informing it with Kandinskian ideas of emotionality and sub-representational content.  As in conventional abstract expressionist practice the composition grows as a reaction to former marks.  My imagery comes from personal snapshots and is chosen to allow for a depth and breadth of associations.  I don't want the images to make sense in implied space with each other, I want them to be seen as independent and isolated, only in that way can my compositions demand from the viewer to be made sense of and that is what I really want; to present something that demands to be made sense of but stubbornly resists becoming definite.  This to me is a representation of the vagueness and ambiguity which is my real experience of the world, the construction of narrative being the fancy of the mind.