Paul Stallan: Architect.
I have been painting and collaging similar shapes and forms for the past 25 years. When I look back at my work, I can trace common shapes and emerging patterns. It is as though my brain has a ‘muscle memory’ that prescribes a family of forms and related images. When I paint, for example, I have no pre-conceptions; rather I attack a canvas automatically, throwing paint, then adding more paint layers, post-rationalising, capturing emerging patterns and figures. I have developed a language, an internal language that is a dialogue between favoured shapes. This language of sorts inspires my constant doodling of structural forms, ships, bridges and submarines, interspersed with architectural grids and a layering of skins and masks – a playground of personal and visual ideas. My experiments in paint are like micro-architectural compositions, free from any functional requirement, warm up exercises, like a gymnast free-styling and practising potential moves before a public presentation, always work-in-progress
