Eliza Griffiths

Love, Alienation and Free Association is the title of a suite of recent paintings and drawings that explores issues and notions of personal and social need, estrangement, and intimacy. Originating from a conceptual matrix that includes research into individual and collective psychology, neuroscience, theatre, film and television drama, the imagery in the paintings follows an open, free associative model – one considered around evocations and indirect connections presented as a form of conversation about existential and experiential questions.

Griffiths’ long term artistic practice is based on the creation of invented characters in painted tableaux, drawing and installation. The works are character-driven, relating to literary, stage or screen fictions that privilege an indepth character exploration. Thematic  strains in her work have foregrounded gender identity, sexuality, desire and psychology.  Over the past number of years she has worked in thematic series, beginning each with a conceptual framework and then allowing the layered painting processes to determine the eventual form and content of the work.

In this recent suite of works, distilled, character-driven psychodramas are counterbalanced by small geometric abstractions and loose, notational drawing. The relationship is as visual and mental interstices between the dense and wrought melodrama, and instinctive, non-verbal language of purely visual association.