Not Love
The 'Not Love' series of paintings highlights the many ways in which we are distracted from real love by sentiments and gestures that promise love but which are, in fact, Not Love.
Each piece starts with sketches, then a pastel drawing is made to explore colour and then the final oil painting is executed. Each piece is painted over two canvases, later joined and framed together, to symbolise the fundamental fracture between two people who are in 'Not Love'.
For the first painting in the series, a work by Toulouse Lautrec, The Kiss, is the inspiration. The Kiss is a beautiful depiction of the closeness and intensity of physical love. Although it's intoxicating, physical love is another of the illusions of love and, as most people know, can distract us from the fracture between two people waiting to open-up at some later moment.
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