I saved these conduit covers from the scrap metal pile when we were converting and old express dairy bottling depository into an art gallery for Frank Cohen and Nicolai Frahm.  They were too nicely made to discard and perfect to be the substrate for a series of small paintings.

The conduit covers were once functional, the passing of time lead to their obsoletion, in contrast to the panel the paint had been sitting in liquid form full of blind potential, waiting for it’s make mark to be made.  These paintings are all about the experience of these two completely unrelated materials when they unsuspectingly collided .  The marks created are the result of the paint reacting with the metal with the minimum of control of those involved.  Together the conduit, having served its intended purpose and the paint, now having lost its potential, both obsolete sit frozen, the moment when the liquid colour hit the hard metal surface, for the moment they are art.

The hard metal surface of the conduit is unchanged, however the paint animates the moment of impact and as it has dried in the expressive state when the two materials collided it visually preserves that moment of movement and velocity.