About Claire Ongley

I’m curious to make an ‘awkward’ painting. The focus of investigation involves juxtaposing the unpredictable use of paint against the ‘rehearsed mark’. Previously, collage acted a formal framework to compositional ideas. Now, spontaneous, yet considered compositions are fabricated from imagination. Masked areas allow this spontaneity within that frame, and once removed the viewer is denied from total chaos and brought back to the thought-out composition. 
The changing scales of brushstrokes establish breaks from the rest of the painting. The motifs become devices to create a tension. The flowers, birds and insects are organic, colourful forms, which in paint create intimate painterly encounters. They also have a particular place in the history of painting and as traditional subjects, but become awkward because of how they are composed. Pace is dictated through the gestural qualities operating over a large surface and generating an energy. Some marks appear accidental, but others are highly controlled, sometimes rehearsed.