Peter Graham

Peter Graham
Australian, born 1970; lives and works in Melbourne

The oyster of my eye (In a cave in the mind of a shadow) 2020
mixed media on linen
Courtesy of the artist

Artist statement:

I was thinking about painting as a ‘medium’ in the occult sense; a fluid agent through which we transmit our thoughts and physically manifest the will of the imagination. Fictive spaces open up in our minds, which can then be depicted outside our bodies, as if paint was the binder between doubt and certainty, giving substance to incorporeal dimensions like geological formation.

How might we extend the reach of our conscious selves into spaces the mind conceives of—maybe the shadows we cast are kind of hollow bodies projected upon the underside of nature, becoming a hole in what is perceivable and known. I imagined venturing forth within the dark radiance that occurs behind closed lids, so that the eyes seem like oysters, separate to our own biology and instead inhabiting the mythic nature of that which they observe.