The gardens, that is.
Some years ago I had the privilege of walking the grounds of Versailles. This series of wall sculptures merges the experience of Versailles with the more recent memory of touring manor houses and their grounds during my sabbatical year in England. Garden design, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, has yielded rich opportunities to explore these landscapes sculpturally.
This series of ten sculptures is the result of examining Versailles – The History of the Gardens and their Sculpture by Stephane Pincus (1996) in which the gardens are depicted from their earliest state to the current design. My close inspection of these plans allowed me to find internal plots where designs of tree lines, foot paths, lawns and pools gave me sculptural inspiration. The wall mounting of these pieces was first explored in the architectural forms of my Liverpool work (2005-06).
With this work I continue a long-running theme. Are these three-dimensional paintings or painted sculptures? Both, I think.