Geoff Morten - Statement on Drawing

'I began working in my California studio in October 2003 by making a series of paintings which were intended to reflect the newness of my surroundings and re-evaluate the previous work which had been made in the UK, but it soon became apparent that more was to be gained through embarking on a period of intense drawing.

Every day I would make a large number of drawings and pin them on the studio wall arranging them into thematically related groups. As they developed a number of images and motifs kept recurring - hands, heads, tools, chairs and tables together with childhood memories of containers, (bread tins used for baking - my father was a baker).

If an image or group of images kept reappearing, almost in spite of themselves, they began to obsess me and I had to use them.

I liked the idea that these 'seemingly' new images were somehow close to my immediate experience. They had a certain authority and integrity which I could relate to and yet I needed to locate and construct a pictorial situation which would contain and contextualise them.

The work on this page chronicles a small selection from that journey.'

Geoff Morten

April 2007