The Elliott Louis Gallery

My work breaks down into two main categories. The first is based on observation and attempts to capture an intimate sense of vision. These include my still lifes which stress a very loose and painterly brushwork as well as the slightly more realist dummy paintings. The other reveals itself in my figurative works that emerge from the imagination and are based on creating a more sculptural sense of plastic form. They are constructed from a sound knowledge of anatomy and are expressive in both form and colour with an emphasis on human psychological presence.

I try to paint as if I was dancing or playing, not concerned about what it means as much as how it feels. When one dances the dance is the point. It's not just to get from one side of the room to the other but to be truly alive in the process. It begins to work for me when I stop being clever, when I abandon a strategy for my project and let what for me is the natural act of painting take over, although living at this point in history it's hard to know what is natural.

The best music is not about something but its own inner logic, a logic that in its undulation, its own appearing and disappearing, gives us a glimpse of the universal. This is what I strive for in my work, to let the painting's own inner logic, its own inner form, come to life.