The Caterpillar Chronicles: FEATURED ARTIST: Adam Hyde

ARTIST STATEMENT

The paintings here are selected from over 2 years of continuous painting, from spring 2009 to winter 2010, the earliest created during the last few months of my degree, and the most recent painted just before Christmas 2010. As a collection they betray the erratic shifting of styles I was compelled to produce over that same period, from conceptual drawings containing bits of videotape, nails and torn up essays, via an ill-conceived (though still somewhat attractive) attempt at painting with clay, to a series of cute and not-so-cute anthropomorphic dogs. During those 18 or so months it is fair to say I was not the master of my work, and neither my outward circumstances or my inner attitude really assisted me in creating anything with cohesion or clarity. But looking back over those paintings, there are amongst them patterns that emerge, imagery which repeats, and which continues to burn a hole within me.

Out of all of the paintings which could as an afterthought be grouped together, these are the most interesting to me, the most compelling, the ones that hold together the best as a group. Here is an insight also into that strange land I call Wastelandnumberseven, an ambiguous and pervasive title which has managed to find its way into every description I make about my work. Its meaning is very varied yet the more I use it the more its meaning is required. It is a contradictory term, and not a very good one, for the more I attempt to close it down to a specific meaning for you to understand, the less it really works for me as a relevant description. So, put as simply as possible, Wastelandnumberseven is my way of remembering who I am, or who the work is; a land, a wasteland, which is where a lot of these imaginary scenes, and scenes of other artists I admire, take place.

The scenes themselves, the details of who or what is doing which to whom does not interest me so much as capturing those fleeting moments within such stories, which are both simultaneously specific and eternal. Brief moments are elevated, spread out on a canvas, and treated as if sacred. I think in that sense, the influence of film and photography is here most visible. For me now, the idea of a dog playing piano, or a legless man standing on his head, seems less interesting, almost gimmicky, compared to a woman looking at her hand, pushing a different hand through a different head of hair, or a man contemplating an apple. But I cannot deny that part of me which requires a fantastical element, an otherworldly image, a blue dog for instance, almost as a side note to be taken for granted whilst allowing the altogether grander story of a thought passing through a human face to play out.

* You can view Adam Hyde's complete work on his website.