OSCAR FENNER

Oscar's practice relies on a combination of creating drawings, collages and paintings.  Working upon multiples in tandem, often with charcoal to commence, then ink; Oscar aims to draw from speed and chance in his landscape work, allowing each movement to flow into the next surface, building gradual correspondances toward a larger body of multiple singular paintings.

Oscar's many painterly limitations and frustrations, are soothed through the construction of collages out of magazines physically with wheat glue, sometimes collating images onto a digital scanner directly, but mostly encouraging tacicity of materiality and form with paper and glue as the vessel... or the paint perhaps?

 'I enjoy juxtaposing images of life throughout different eras. Often focusing on modern human ongoings, alongside otherwise amusing representations of human certainty and/ or the ideals of advertisement from recent history .  Bending or leaning toward the uncanny sublime, inspired by individuals such as of Magritte and Phillip Guston; my way of working often works toward symbolising what I am unable to say effectively through verbal language alone.'

Often this means tearing apart loose images which helps draw from inward forces- toward the psyche and imagination, whilst still enabling collection of inspiration from the every day mundanity and mendacity of modern reality. 

'There is a lot of fun to be found in the repetitiveness, the toil and the predictability of life when related alongside the intrinsically unexplainable, unknown and vast nature of our shared collective history especially in correspondence to our destiny as a species and the path we find ourselves on today with so many political and environmental injustices at our doorsteps.'

Painting in watercolours on the backs of postcards was initially a warm up tool and hobby whilst in the studio, but as with any surface or material comes versatility and and various pathways for experimentation.

'To begin with, I found myself drawn to simple black ink and a quill brush for quick gestural inferences in forms of marks, which I allow further inform what I see in the surface from one mark to the next. Being overly tonal or dark, does not bother me as I feel i can always use lighter tones later on, and enjoy the muddying.

 I will take moments to stop and stare with blurred vision, allowing for memory and imagination to help inform what would best inhabit the post card.  A bit like shadows on a wall! I have begun to explore sanding  the original glossy side images on the postcards prior to painting, allowing for an interplay of painterly and photographic languages, and a nod to collage as the vessel for informing much of my compositional balancing of chaos when with the paint.

If it goes 'wrong', ah well! The freedom of small work has enabled me to see that exploring a wide body of gestures does not have to be solely on a grand scale. '