Website: https://www.roanneodonnell.es/
Process painter currently working in Scotland on the series of paintings and drawings, 'Surface Work '. The subject of my work is the process of making it. With limitation, restriction and repetition, an exact set of materials and a constrained mark-making action, I have deliberately controlled its painfully slow development and direction. It is a twenty-three-year investigation. The mark is a horizontal line. The substrate is paper. Carriers and binders are limited to oil and cold wax. Pigments are restricted to charcoal and graphite. The physical process is the repetitive action of mark-making, bending over paper laid flat, and moving my paint mixtures to create a line, over and over, again and again. The concept is a question of gemination: ”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Paraphrase: Heraclitus of Ephesus. The rationale is that duplication is impossible. The motivation is to question it. My studio practice is mechanical. My process is calculated. I systematically work on one layer in one sitting, irrespective of scale as I want consistency. Despite my effort to control the process, physics and the movement of the human body are variable. So many factors dictate tonal uniformity that once I start, I can't rest. To do so for more than a few minutes destroys continuity and the image is split into visually obvious, unwanted sections: factors such as how the paint is mixed and laid on, a humid or dry atmosphere, the rhythm of my gesture, the speed of my movement; if I’m aggressive or gentle, if I use heavy or light pressure, how I stand, the angle of my arm.