I found this interesting quote today in a book I’m reading.  It’s from Marcel Duchamp, taken from a letter he wrote to Hans Richter:

‘This Neo- Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did.  When I discovered ready-mades I thought to discourage aesthetics.  In Neo-Dada they have taken my ready-mades and found aesthetic beauty in them.  I threw the bottlerack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty’.

This somehow resonated with me, and made me think about the lighter series I’m currently working on.  I find beauty in mass produced objects.

However, although I like Pop Art, I don’t really feel much affinity with the aims of pop artists such as Andy Warhol, whose response to the mass produced object was to create mass produced art without trace of human craft.  Other artists such as Jasper Johns took a more painterly approach which is something I can identify with, although the resulting paintings are very different from my own.

My response to the ready-made is to create a unique, individual painting.  I see the exceptional in each object, and although I make use of repetition in the composition, there is also variation.  My attention to capturing the quality of the light also places the objects firmly back in the natural world, of which I feel man made objects are a part – because we ourselves come from nature.