Daphne Ang @ Lady Lazarus

'Prima Materia'

Acrylic, India ink and powdered pigments on canvas

2020

18 x 24 inches (46 x 61 cm)

https://daphneang.com

I believe that art must transcend life itself, it must speak of something beyond the natural world. Art must be something transcendental, extraterrestrial – art is the stuff of the divine and the sublime. 

My work is heavily inspired by the writings of Carl Jung and his work into understanding the human psyche and the deep unconscious. Because of this, I came to the realisation that the sublime and the divine exist within us, both individually and collectively. 

My paintings depict and articulate the ‘abstract unconscious’ through the use of active imagination, a method of meditation used in analytical psychology which refers to the process and method of introspection which opens up the psyche and its inner world of images, allowing the intangible unconscious contents to be expressed in tangible forms and creative works. 

The act of painting always mirrors something inside me, and my paintings always echo and chimes with the same melody as within me. For this reason, I see abstract painting as providing the best possible expression for something unknown, the stuff of the sublime and divine. Painting the abstract opens up the possibilities of interpretation and allowing others to see different things without limiting the imagination. 

Distilled through the process of abstraction whereby line and colour textural relationships become the sole means of expression, it is in the abstraction of forms and purity of colour that pure emotion and meaning finds form. 

Painting to me is alchemical, and I use it as a ritual - as an edifying and illuminative exploration of how the psyche influences material. 

When I start on a new painting, I try to keep the first applications of paint spontaneous and unpredictable to set the scenery into motion. I try not to limit my set up or narrow it down to a plan too much as I want to give the material room to do its own thing. 

I draw from a variety of traditional and non-traditional methods and materials. For example, I might use traditional oil painting techniques such as creating an underpainting to create the background followed by splattering, pouring, slapping, spraying paint on and then using a range of acrylic mediums and chemicals such as isopropyl alcohol, to unite or dissolve certain areas. I might begin with expressive and almost violent strokes of paint using Chinese ink painting tools and techniques to form the main composition of an abstract painting, then build up with translucent colour glazes. My favourite tools are the spray bottle, mouth atomizer, needle applicator bottles, syringes, window squeegee, and other household cleaning items and implements acquired from hardware stores. 

I make decisions on the go, drawing from a knowledge of how colours and different types of paint interact with each other, as well as the tools and mediums which can alter this interaction. While technique and knowledge guides the decisions and calculations I make during my painting process, the main work is done by chemistry and the transformation, creation, or combination of the materials themselves.

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