"Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window." F. Scott Fitzgerald
I have spent a lot of time in my life staring out of windows. For me it provides a space to lose track, to daydream, and to remember.
When I returned to painting in my thirties, I found I was consistently drawn to the subject of the window, but in a way that was concerned less with the specifics of the view and more with the process of looking out.
For me, the window captures a special vision of the world – combining an external reality with our own internal experience of it. The window links the inner and outer spaces of our daily lives.
The window as a subject has become my platform to explore the mechanics of painting and to register human experience. I like to consider my paintings as contemplations of the changing surface of everyday window panes, acknowledging random moments in time and space helped by changes in weather, the season, or the light of the day. And how our experience of gazing out of a window can be touched by memories, hopes, uncertainties and daydreams.
I often paint from personal or found photographs which I gather, edit and reshape, deliberately blurring or sparing certain elements while attentively observing reality in others. Elements of the view are interrupted by raindrops, or the window pane is made opaque by the reflection of light on condensation. These decisions are mostly intuitive. My paintings are formed of layers of oil paint and glazes, and I usually work on up to 4 representations of the same view at one time.
The window pane, the world in front of and behind it, is the sensory threshold between the internal and external – Inside Outside.
In many ways it is a shame for me that my show will be happening during lockdown. But when I think about it, the fact that so much of my work relates to looking out of windows, the theme immediately seems more appropriate.
We are all living with degrees of anxiety about what is happening and what may lie ahead for us, our loved ones, our work, and our society. But I personally find some comfort in having to take a step back from productivity driven hyper-connected 24/7 life. While we are forced to stay inside, the window, and the opportunities looking out provide may be even more meaningful to us.
© Panter & Hall
