ARTIST’S STATEMENT by ROSEMARY GOODENOUGH

‘Every Mark is a Decision’

As an Artist I am viscerally aware of the straight-line connection between me and the Artists who made their Marks with such verve on the walls of the Chauvet Caves approximately 35,000 years ago. We don't know their names, sex or motivations but the drive and passion to make Marks is a primitive and inescapable human need and this straight-line connection between Artists across millennia will never be broken. Being part of a link in this past and future chain is fundamental to my life as an Artist.

My father was passionately interested in sculpture and paintings and I will always be grateful to him for teaching me how to look at art in great detail and it has informed how I work as there is a great deal more to artistic creation than the making of marks. Looking is incredibly important. People always ask how long it takes to make a piece and the first answer is ‘a lifetime’ and the next answer varies from work to work. As an example of this process of looking, there was a painting I was pleased with but knew something was wrong. I put it on a spare easel in my studio and kept glancing at it and 8 months later I realised that I didn’t need to add to it: it needed to have something removed. I grabbed a palette knife, removed the ‘offending’ marks and the painting was finished! Proof to me at least that painting involves a lot of looking, not always doing.

I’m particularly interested in the Japanese concept of ‘Ma’ which I understand is to do with absence of activity so for example in music it is the silence between the sounds, in painting it’s the unfilled space that leaves the viewer able to use their own imagination. To me the negative space is as important as the positive space and in my paintings and drawings every mark is a decision and every decision to not make a mark is absolutely critical to the final piece.  I use my visual memories but work purely from my imagination.

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