2011
Paul work is centred on drawing, painting and performance based photography depicting imagined characters of a personal and fabricated identity and mindscapes which represent imagined places on the point of collapse and regeneration. There has been an increasing oscillation in the work between figuration, landscape and abstraction and the image of the self merging into its surroundings. This development has been influenced by an artist’s relationship with their studio environment and the surrounding debris and detritus from their working method that creeps into the work itself.
February 2010
Time Piece is a performance by Paul Newman simulating the movement of a waiter clearing tables. The action is a metaphor for the mechanics of an analogue clock and is an association with ‘a slice of time’, both as shift work and as a durational performance for the length of a show. The routine is relatively precarious as a rehearsed action with the potential for lapses in concentration due to distraction, boredom and fatigue, generating incident that can disrupt the mechanism of the clock. Its framework explores two components of performance; repetition and unpredictability.
2008
Traveling in the Socorro deserts of New Mexico, an unidentified flying object drifts in to view. “Who’s there?” As this is a holiday destination especially favoured by visitors from other planets, the question seems relevant. However, it turns out that the visitor has only traveled a few thousand miles from the UK, rather than the light years others make to this particular location. But like the scientists and specialists of the extra terrestrial, this visitor is also in the desert to undertake research, to explore other dimensions of the various fictional characters that populate his work.
Paul Newman’s work (performance, painting and installation) involves quasi-human creatures finding themselves in discomforting scenarios. Interior anxieties are played out by placing these creatures (already bearing the evidence of psychological unrest) into an environment where their disquiet is amplified to the stuff of nightmares.
Diana Stephenson 2008
2007
A portfolio of imaginary characters and situations is generated through an ongoing series of drawing, painting and performance based installation.
The characters themselves are hybrid creations influenced by dark fairy tales, classic horror and monster figures such as “The Fly”, as well as the outlandish creations in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and their contrary trappings within Lewis Carroll’s text and its illustrations.
The specific awkwardness of the painting is reinforced through the discordant clashing in the range of surface marks. Yet if the relationship between material and image could in fact be considered a degree arbitrary, there is also an integral connection here with the contrary nature of the work itself. The particular mannerism of the painting is also reflected through the development of the body of work through character performance and installation. Though perhaps stylistically different to the painting, these works and their re presentation as photographic documentation carry the same tone and poise.
The paintings, performances and photographic works explore both similarities and differences in a portrayal of a multiple characters, which could also be identified as a portrait of one.