JAMES DODD PIGMENT HIGH

Artist Statement

James Dodd’s long term references have been the marks, names and scrawl that proliferate our various urban and suburban environments. These hand made residues are often the results of small-scale social transgressions such as the act or statement of graffiti. Dodd has regularly rendered his outcomes in a lurid technicolour palette indicative of a state of heightened awareness, a hallucination or a post apocalyptic sunset.

In Pigment High, this most recent body of work Dodd takes a microscope to the scrapes, the peeling paint, coarse incisions and assorted ruptured surfaces of the urban environment. Snippets of legible text still appear scattered throughout the works though they are much more like drunken stream of consciousness prose than the awkward spelling and insults of urban inscriptions that have featured in the past. He has also turned up the colour saturation freak out dial. A self-confessed colour pig, the artist has taken the time to wallow about in a pigment high, avoiding any commitment to pictorial representation and relishing an opportunity to travel abstractly.