Playground

The painting is made up of two canvases of the same size, presented one above the other. Each canvas measures 60 by 90 cm. A 5mm gap separates the two canvases.
The upper segment is made with acrylic paints, the colours are whites, creamy pinks and yellows. Its surface is highly textured and contains a variety of marks that show their true nature only when close; which are from further away either illusionistic or seem accidental. The bottom segment is uniformlygrey, it looks flat and does not reflect light, and it seems very real in comparison to the airy surface that sits above it. Both surfaces suggest objecthood rather than representation.
The upper segment contains a juxtaposition of small piles of paint, scratches, marks made with colour pencil and words written with pencils. The subtle scribbles and writing overlay the shapes created by the heaps of paint that sit on and organise the surface. Seen from a distance it is an abstract work that contains a movement between shadow and light with no predominance of one over the other. Seen from closer in, the painting becomes like two walls from two different places, made from different materials, with different conditions of light.
A tension occurs close to the gap between the canvases, at the edge between light and shadow.

The messy activity of wringing paint from the roller gradually creates control over the painting and brings form. The surface records in itself a certain pleasure in its making. The title given to the painting suggests children playing with sand and water in a playground, as the artist has played with the surface.Scratched into the surface are phrases like ‘’n Paris,ground of my childhood the surface alsowo walls from two different places, made from different materials, with differenle coin des amoureux’ (the lover’s corner), ‘mon frère’ (mybrother) and in the surface’s centre, ‘moi’ (me). These are naming things that are not formally represented. The writing activity engages with flatness and materiality as you might write on a wall or carve in the sand.

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