‘A room is a fairly malleable space’ — Georges Perec, Species of Spaces.

I paint the everyday as a way to notice the unnoticed, indicating ordinary realities that
shift into the fabricated realm through the materiality of paint. My paintings are driven by
a command of composition and colour, and the relation between geometry and objects to
portray uneasy yet balanced collages of lived in, observed, and imagined interior spaces,
moments and perspectives. They are layered formally in paint, and contextually with
subtle references to history, film, theatre, music and other narrative material to implicate
the space with a richness that suggests action that happens during, before, after, in and
around the represented space.

I consider my work as filmic; sets that a poised to be interacted with, transitional
moments or snapshots of wider happenings that exist beyond the confines of the framed
image. The canvas acts as a portal or window into a space rooted in the everyday, yet is
carried beyond what is ordinary by the paint to suggest something more. There are
indications of human comings and goings, in discarded shoes, a precariously placed
glass, lamps left on, loose plugs; a seemingly domestic space that could be lived in, yet
the intervention of paint is vital in confusing this position.

The existence of paint is multiple: as representation of other things, as a representation
of itself, simply as paint. The medium fluctuates between states of material reality and
narrative realism. The paint takes a space that could exist, a space where a moment has
taken or will take place, rendering it an impossibility despite its apprehension for action.

I am currently investigating specificity and complexity dynamics, which hinge on the
translation of individual, everyday experience to universal, sympathetic representation.
The spectator is significant to these dynamics and synthesises the connection between
art and life, as my paintings either deny, enable, elevate, or direct the formation of shared
ideas about domestic space and wider everyday narratives.

Instagram: @finn.orourke.art