The Arte Povera movement brought into being in 1960s Italy was in reaction to the commercialised art world. They reused throw away materials and moved away from using oil paint on canvas which disrupted the art world. It was born out of activity in a period of economic instability in Italy, so it must have been out of necessity too? Even though I am using found wooden surfaces instead of canvas, it is for environmental reasons, I can relate to this way of making art, as I am not much interested in the commercial art world.
It is also about materiality as the wood and homemade oil paint are a match made in heaven. This method allows me the paint action of gliding across the surface as well as 'understanding' 'hearing' what the surface is telling me.
The paintings that I made with the salvaged pieces (like pew from church etc) were not successful due to the scale, they seemed to lose the intimacy that the smaller paintings have. The way that I work is very much in the German Expressionist style of immediacy of feelings and instinctually but the substrates either didn't allow for the speed I needed to go at and lacked the essence, as in the image above.
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