Max Pham
My exhibition focuses on my journey of pushing past my comfort zone , in refining conventional means of encapsulating form and tones in an artwork . I had a perfectionist approach to my pieces , refining lines and colour until satisfied , so I sought to free myself from that tedious cycle and look for more ways of artistic expression . My first real breakthrough was with my liberal use of card in my etching work , with minimal fixes or adjustments to a line or detail , and letting the card do most of the work , with how the texture of each scrape differs , mirroring an almost spontaneous mentality I had when doing the prints , with only a semblance of what I had initially imagined . This developed into a new compositional method , which was to release all brief – almost fleeting – permutations of detail in an artwork onto the canvas in one go . As a result , my journey follows a consistent theme – direct or underlying – of discovering order in the chaotic and convoluted nature of one ’ s mind , as one tries to make sense amidst the stream of consciousness . I explored different artists that would follow this theme – such as Kurt Jackson and his loose brushwork , or Nina Murdoch ’ s expertise in controlling the flow of light in a scene – along with experimenting with a diverse range of media to find the most effective in expressive mark making .