CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE MERCIER

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	‘PAINTING TOWARDS FORM – a space between painting sculpture and architecture’

My work stems from my interest in contemporary abstraction, spatial imagination and the relationship of painting, sculpture and architecture.  I have grown up professionally trained as an architect, at the same time always and continually practicing painting and sculpture. The work itself explores the visual and physical experience of space, through form, space, color and texture.  This is achieved through the build up and overlapping of various layers, thicknesses, types and quantities of paint in various states of solidity (cast, liquid, gel, etc.).  Made only and entirely from different paint mediums (inks, enamels, oils, & latex), the works challenge the notion of pictorial space through the creation of actual 3-dimensional experience (form). Space is physically created with paint acting not only as a color pigment but also as a sculpting medium. The process, developed over a 6 year period, focuses on the act of painting as a form making process and involves a technique I call ‘Paint Modeling’, a cross between the acts of painting, sculpting and architectural model making. Here the material of paint plays two roles, its traditional role as a color pigment (illusionary/expressive space) and a new role as a construction material used to build 3-dimensional space (form), a space somewhere between painting, sculpture and architecture.

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