Colin Lawson

Exhibition at Saint Paul's Gallery, Auckland

Title and Theme for the Show: Snow falls on mountains without wind is the second part of PX

In trying to understand the difficulties of painting, and what it might be to be a painter today, or, rather, what it is to work in the midst of painting's continual presence, like a child alone, picking away beside her bed at tiny cracks in the wall, sizeable fault lines open up. And these lines, which begin imperceptibly as invisible fissures but seem to diverge, chasm-like, chart the same ground: they declare to be about painting's (principled) way of being/acting in the world. And since we are speaking of lines, we find here lines bifurcating - some become lines of flight along which new ways of thinking proliferate, while others pull us back to earth, to sedimentary thinking (the difference between unbounded hope and the despair of conformism, between lightness and heaviness) (1).

 Lawson says that he “works under conditions of restraint rather than freedom.” The works are tightly controlled. He doesn’t try to articulate what he’s looking for. He doesn’t give it a name and he claims that there is no style, but ” its execution does require a heightened form of concentration and a play of extended thought and memory.” From afar, they are paintings that try to disappear into their surroundings but the viewer is welcome to take a closer look, for it is only then, once the viewer comes very near, that the tiny brush strokes are revealed and the surface is transformed into a thick and broken shell.

Bryant, J. (2007).

Colin Lawson's work is light and subtle, while still reminding you the process of accumulation and mark making which demands time and attention. He briefly discuses his work through the eyes of the viewer in a similar way I would describe my works, I want the viewer to engage with the tiny marks that are only revealed up close, but you have to be attentive in the works of mine as you may miss out if you don't fully engage with the works. I think this is a similar approach to Lawson's as he describes the tiny brush strokes that are revealed up close, causing the surface to be transformed.