About my work - the seen and unseen
My practice moves between abstraction emerging from the unconscious and imagined sacred landscapes, exploring the relationship between inner experience, perception and the worlds we construct around us. At its heart is an enquiry into consciousness and the nature of seeing: what becomes visible when we become still enough to notice what is already arising.
In my physical mixed-media paintings, layers of tissue paper, asemic writing, ink and paint build fragmented, tactile surfaces where language moves beyond literal meaning, becoming gesture, rhythm and transmission. Layers conceal and reveal, allowing traces to appear and disappear within the surface. The work is informed by the weathered surfaces and ancient visual languages of temple walls, worn and transformed through time. I am drawn to this sense of impermanence, where nothing remains entirely fixed and meaning is continually revealed, obscured and renewed.
Alongside these works, I create mystical digital landscapes on the iPad, with each work documenting the time invested and the number of individual brush marks made during its creation. Inspired by the imagined realms of Shambhala and the Himalayan landscape, these works explore colour, light and space as places of contemplation. Whereas my abstract paintings turn inward, the digital landscapes open outward, creating spaces in which time seems to suspend and the familiar becomes slightly otherworldly.
My fascination with quantum physics and Buddhist perspectives on form and formlessness brings another dimension to this enquiry. I am drawn to questions of observation, potentiality and the relationship between what appears and what remains unseen. Rather than seeking fixed answers, I am interested in the space of not-knowing: the moment before something takes form and the possibility that exists within it.
This is reflected in my approach to making.
Influenced by my mindfulness meditation practice, I work with attention, presence and a willingness to let go of predetermined outcomes. I love the space between making an image and allowing an image to emerge. The act of painting becomes a practice of looking, listening and responding, where each mark changes the conditions for the next. In this sense, the work is less about representing an idea than encountering what is present. Form arises through attention and is allowed to remain open, incomplete and impermanent.
The physical and digital works become two complementary expressions of the same contemplative enquiry: one moving inward through matter, layering and mark; the other moving outward through colour, light and space.Together they occupy a threshold between the tangible and intangible, form and formlessness, knowing and not-knowing. They are places to pause, to look and to encounter what might emerge when we stop trying to determine what something should be.
Joanne Farley-Webb
