Gordon Mcconnell
Artist Statement
I search for and find most of the imagery for my paintings in the streams of stills that compose motion pictures. People often say that individual frames from movie masterpieces, like Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia, or any number of films you might name, could be displayed like canvases in a museum. In a way, this is what I’m attempting to do in my paintings. I integrate the experience of the film as a part of my life experience—something I’ve perceived, felt, and analyzed—and I make my art out of that.
Where films are animated, paintings are still, but films are comprised of thousands of still images, set in motion historically by the machinery of mechanical projectors and today as streams of digital data mapped-out on electronic screens. Our experience of movies is fleeting, ephemeral, the images pass before our eyes uninterrupted in the flow of narrative as if in a waking dream.