Paintings are neural. They are about thinking. I believe a painting needs to do something. It should be a mechanical thing of sorts. By its intentional use of tensions and harmonies it should construct in the eye and the mind a type of visual resonance that, through time, continues to move and shift. It should be both concrete and elusive.

In my work I am trying to find a peculiar type of thinking space; one that has its point of origin in the rhythms and movements established on the surface of the image through color and mark. 

These more recent stripe paintings are, in part, derived from photography. An image is made in the camera. This image is then digitally filtered and this digital study then becomes the framework for the painting. In exploring the natural tension between the image based conventions of painting and photography I am principally interested in the relationship between illusionary space and surface; between technology and the brush and the type of thinking space this relationship encapsulates. 

In reducing my process to single vertical lines where the only real variance is in color and the natural undulations of the falling hand I’ve discovered a rich working space loaded with all I care about in painting. The process is rigorous and poetic and when the work is finished it sits on the wall and hums.

Karl Connolly