PIPPA YOUNG

Solo show at Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017

To see ‘through a glass darkly’ is to have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality.

This body of work is about representation, identity, and visual language.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are. I am interested in perceived, mediated and constructed realities - what we perceive to be true, what the outer world tells us is true, and our inner constructed truths. Often, I wonder, how far do these resemble reality at all?

I am interested in surface and illusion both in a psychological sense and in a painterly sense. For me, the act of painting is a microcosm of a wider experience.

The phrase,’through a glass darkly’, is biblical, from Corinthians, and first appeared in the King James translation. Modern translations use the word ‘mirror’. In the original version the writer was probably referring to a piece of highly polished bronze which provided a reflective surface

It has been said: “an artist’s job is to hold a mirror up to the world”, and: “every painting is a self-portrait of the artist”. This collection of paintings is simultaneously both a reflection of the viewer and a representation of the painter, whilst the surface, mediated through an experimentation with visual language, refers to a fragmented, illusory reality.