"The face
in this painting emerges and fades into paint, collage and words, an interplay
of figurative and abstract. I don’t rely on physical likeness but instead paint
from the inside out; revealing a sense of the thread of our inner lives. From
the personal to the universal. 

Intuitively led, the paint marks over layers of
collaged paper construct a kind of emotional landscape, somewhere memories and
thoughts can be half-formed but fully felt. I am obsessed by the fluidity of
our inner narratives and continuing reactions to the world around us, something
behind our eyes, flowing on below the surface of daily life.

I like to include elements of nature and man-made
buildings, streets; the places we move through and dwell. In this painting,
fragments of houses, trees, and shapes ebb in and out of view, some obscured by
layers of paint. I felt
that the bird at the bottom right needed to stay in view, interacting with the
figurative area.

I paint with
traditional materials not digital, all hand drawn and painted, and this whole
painting feels as though it retains that rawness, connecting to something tangible;
a slow-living approach to art in a fast-paced digital world. I kept asking what
is considered ‘real’ in our digital spaces, the increasing occurrence of the
word A.I in our everyday language. Where does the soul belong?" Toni Cogdell