In this world of silence, no truth exists

Tracings, 2009.

The only knowledge, wit or wisdom I have for now is that my paintings come from silence and a world of abandonment. In another world there is this wrestling and restless engagement with things such as aesthetics and truth in which I can sometimes aggressively articulate my experiences and carve them in stone as though unbreakable and, at the next turn, smash these tablets of truth with little regard for what, yesterday, was the law of belief. In this world of silence, no truth exists; there is the abandonment of power that truth manifestly becomes in that other world of dogma, ideology and aesthetic certainty. The silence becomes the painting, the painting comes from silence. It is the moment when painting is no longer an act of doing or making but of receiving. There is no ego shape here, no facilitative reply to aesthetic notions, whether historical or contemporary, there is only that desperate faith of the abandoned... and there is the discovery and rediscovery of 'Art' which is exhilarating.

Patrick Graham.