2007
Japanese ink, watercolour, pencil, blusher and eye shadow on paper
7 paintings, 78.5 x 59cm each

Tracy Payne’s solo exhibitions at Michael Stevenson in 2005 and 2007, respectively titled Sacred Yin and Sacred Yang, have been concerned with concepts of earthly bondage and spiritual awakening, cycles of life, death and rebirth, and the interdependence of masculine and feminine principles. The recent Sacred Yang paintings, inspired by the Shaolin monks of China and their mastery of physical and mental discipline, represented an aspirational ideal, their dominant mood one of inner peace. But Payne also found a new direction in one particular series, Altered States, in which emotion was traced through the facial expressions of a monk, from concentrated potential through to an uncontrolled outburst of energy.

In the new series, Slow Release, Payne continues this exploration of emotion, something that she notes is usually absent in portraiture. The serial format of the work points to another key influence in her work: film, or specifically video. Unlike portraiture, the narrative-driven film is a medium in which intense emotions are frequently enacted. At the same time the viewer with a remote control has the ability to slow down or halt time, to linger over or analyse the otherwise transient. In Slow Release, Payne has freeze-framed the movements of a Japanese actress and reversed them, so that her attempt to strangle herself leads incrementally towards a state of serenity. At the same time her face reflects a change from childlike anguish to more adult acceptance. Self-inflicted bondage, linked to sexuality but more potently a metaphor for the ties that bind the self, is a recurrent theme in Payne’s work, as is the strong thread of autobiography.

© 2007 Michael Stevenson. All rights reserved.