February 1 - March 1, 2020
Paul Tait | Artist’s Statement
“I am an outsider.
It is a description I am comfortable with as it fits on many levels, being an immigrant amongst other things. Specifically, with regard to my career as an artist, I have had no formal training past the age of 13. At no point in my life has the lack of training been an issue to me. Without the option of art in my high school curriculum I pursued a career in the sciences and became a mechanical engineer working in the energy recovery and water and wastewater sectors. In retrospect this has been of great benefit to me in my pursuit of a parallel career in the arts. My work is intuitive.
Traditionally I allow my works to develop from the first mark with subsequent marks taking their cue from the previous until a picture begins to develop. My work is iterative. I start out with pencil sketches which I transfer via tracings to a surface for painting. This has traditionally been oil on canvas, for me, but more recently gesso board and paper. The process starts out as an evolutionary/exploratory process (setting out) and at some juncture turns into a balancing exercise, resolving the relationships between the forms and colours (closing out). Sometimes during this process, the work becomes obstinate and hard to resolve, much like their progenitor, and every mark becomes a struggle. On these occasions the decision to battle on or banish the work to a dark recess in my studio must be made. Sometimes the banished works can languish for years before being rediscovered. At this point I am either pleasantly surprised and the resolution of these works is almost effortless, or I have a failure on my hands, fit only to be painted over in preparation for something new.”
Opening: February 1, 2020 | 6–8 pm
G Spot Contemporary Art Space (Old Location)
310 East 9th Street
Houston, 77008 Texas
713-869-4770
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