Claire Undy

Born Nottinghamshire, 1986

Lives and works in London

I make paintings as opposed to visual images. They are intended to be viewed ‘in the flesh’, as certain marks, textures or multi-dimensional colours only reveal themselves under scrutiny. The body of the viewer is required to move in front of the work, shifting the viewpoint and altering the light. Getting physically close to a painting reveals brushstrokes and the hand that made them, showing whether a gesture has been cradled over and painstakingly drawn with a tiny brush or swept across the surface with the full extent of the arm. I wish to create an almost visceral suggestion of the way in which the painting is made.

I am interested in a universal language of painting, but not the subjective symbolism of gesture or colour but communication of ‘the act of painting’. You can look at a painting and see which layer was put over which; the shape and size of the brush; the direction it has been moved and with what degree of force. Whilst referencing its own painterliness, the imperfections of the handmade paints and surfaces emphasize the real, as opposed to a spiritual or transcendental perfection. Hesitant or indecisive marks reveal an uncertain human hand as opposed to an artist’s divine vision.

My work is primarily concerned with the relationship between the viewer and the painting. I am interested in the extent to which this can be manipulated, and the position in which a painting exists between the intentions of the painter, and the perceptions of the viewer. I would like to create work in which the meaning and purpose are the same: work which is about paint, about the act of painting, and the act of looking at a painting.