Justin Weeks

Born Bristol, 1974

Lives and works in St Leonards-on-Sea, U.K.

Prizes: Winner of Artspan Prize, ING, Discerning Eye, Federation of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London, 2012. And selected in 2011 and 2015.

My enquiry into painting presents a tension where the ephemeral comes up against the solid, light against the dark with moments of veiling and disclosure. To achieve this I move between an intuitive method akin to automatic writing relying on chance and subconscious impulses. This is followed by a more considered and reflective process of working in layers.

Being studio-based allows time and space for observation and decision making. Working on several compositions at a time I scrape back, rework and manipulate the surface until the form appears. I see the paintings as emergent realms that are simultaneously forming and dissolving. They come across as strange yet familiar, to me this has a lot to do with our subjective experience in relation to the outside world. Something that can be understood intuitively yet can’t quite be fully recognised. Balancing somewhere between ambiguity and clarity.