The Bystanders

There is a Haiku poem by Matsuo Basho (1644-94) that talks about a frog sitting on a rock looking at a lily pond. The frog is the self and the lily pond represents a membrane of consciousness, and simultaneously, the world – the abstract and figurative world. It’s a question of when to jump, when to engage.

All three painters in this exhibition have been present (such as that is) for a reasonably significant period of time, and all three painters will show older work (roughly within a ten year span) with very recent work. The ‘sitting on the rock’ is more to do with their independent status, one which is both ‘reflective’ and ‘direct’, within and alongside a slow changing pluralistically evolving art world. The question about jumping is more to do with what they have committed to as painters, what they are committed to saying.