Rachel Busby

Choice of deliberation. 
Observing the impermeable of impossibility, 2024

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The original painting was an inadvertent nod to my early years of Acid House parties in the wilderness of West Wales. The painting was constructed in a similar way to making tie dye t-shirts which I also liked to make during my teenage years. The work was unpremeditated and instinctively perilous. It was messy, working wet into wet thick paint, the folding and twisting of the heavy wet canvas was a strenuous activity and I remember this work was physically exhausting. I left it as an overbearing reminder of substance misuse. 

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Returning to this work a few years later, it still screamed at me but flipping it on its reserve I was able to see the history of its making, the paint had bled through the canvas reminding me of how I made this piece. 

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Deciding to honour this memory, I methodically traced around the blemishes,  following a new set of rules of engagement. Each drawn mark was now intentional and meticulously laid out. This action highlighted the difference in response in context to contrast of time, thought process and the physical energy exerted. From cause to effect. Or from effect to cause. 

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The reverse of this painting is a map, a symbolic depiction of interrelationships of past stories locked within a spatial field. A memory methodically mapped out.