'City Hotel', 2002-3 Painting

I am an Australian painter working and living in Sydney. The major theme throughout my work has always been the perennial problem of representation: where to draw the line between "˜real life' and "˜art', illusion and abstraction, transcription and composition. Although we tend to view this question as a peculiarly modern one, the problematic relationship between illusion and reality originates from ancient debates and was one that dominated the art of the seventeenth century as much as it pre-occupies the art of our own time. As such, I am interested in a wide range of painters whose works have incorporated aspects of the pictorial mode evident in lens-based images, be it Vermeer and his lesser known contemporary, Willem Kalf in the seventeenth century, seminal artists from the sixties to the present, such as Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Johannes Kahrs and Judith Eisler, to name only a few. Though these artists represent a diverse stylistic range, it could be suggested that they universally adopt what might broadly be seen as a more "˜impersonal' style of painting in response to a universal dilemma: where does art situate itself between the world and our perception of it? - See more at: http://timolsengallery.com/pages/artists_details2.php?artist_id=53#sthash.ZjymHZrw.dpuf