Artist's Statment - Coilin Rush

Of the painters I currently admire, most would seem to seek a context in which no dichotomies are recognised; theory/ practice, language/ dumbness, that which can represent and that which cannot. There are two approaches. Those who would wish to work in regard of an accepted historical progression of painting in the last century and those who do not recognise any sequential trail of events leading to the present day.

There are works that cannot be judged by the criteria of modernist or postmodernist theory and there are works that meet the criteria of both. I don't know which approach makes for better art. Of the two I choose to meet the criteria of both systems of assessment (modernist and postmodernist) and then perhaps find, for painting, an arena of discourse where neither are relevant. Some painters have been successful in this endeavour but perhaps not enough to achieve the critical mass required to effect a watershed of historical concerns.

Not all artists consider this relevant but I think painters still have this problem. In the make-up of the television screen I find an answer or maybe an amnesty. Three colours, over and over again. No TV screen. No object within. No room for my personality or me. This is where I have found legitimate practice.