ANNA McNEIL

My paintings explore the limits between abstraction and representation to investigate how we form perceptions.

I am fascinated by how our constantlychanging points of view affect how we interpret both the painted imagery andour own experience, which in turn forms our identity.

I aim to investigate visual relationshipsthrough my painting practice, including suggestions of representation orplaying with abstractions unfolding through the process of making the work.

Through allowing a narrative ambiguity inmy paintings, I am interested in reflecting how our perception and our memoryare dynamic, creative processes and how meaning, in a representational sense,is constantly manipulated by contemporary perspectives.

My work has been focused on consideringdifferent levels of the memory process, both the manipulated representational narrativeand abstract concepts of implicit memory.

Themes evoked by my paintings includeintimacy, unity and isolation in human relationships.

2016

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2012-2015

I paint what I experience, adopting motifs to act as intermediaries that reflect my internal dialogue.

This body of work was inspired by thinking about Memory as a dynamic and creative process, that underpins who we are now and leads to our experience of the contemporary.

I am interested in how this is reflected in the process of making my paintings, through the transformation of an image, the editing and embellishing processes of interpretation.

The paintings reflect on autobiographical and emotional memory, considering themes of intimacy, unity and isolation in human relationships.

Taking as my source imagery anonymous found photographs, I am interested in the alchemical process of how meaning is altered when an image is re-contextualized and translated to paint.

The images show representations of people but they are not painted as portraits, rather as metaphors for the memory of a feeling. Through the elimination or distortion of specific representational details I hope to allude to the subject of an image without fully describing it.

I want my paintings to display a sense of the personal, without dictating my own narrative; i would like them to act as a space where the viewer can make their own connections and form their own interpretations.