JASON DEARY  Blue Gate 2018 Watercolour, colour pencil on linen over panel 18&quot; x 14&quot;, Display-Ready  Estimated Value: $1,400  &quot;I make abstract paintings that represent an investigation of fragmented memory through a wide variety of adopted and invented painting languages and an exhaustive exploration of technique and material. I am interested in painting as a means of recording time, action and thought. The paintings serve as a meditative thinking space both while being made and in their final form. I am interested in how we can hold onto, reveal and record memories of the past in order to understand the present and imagine our future. I work exclusively in a black and white palette, making works that nod to various means of documentation such as photocopies, old textbooks and photographs. My paintings explore balancing presence against absence, confusion against clarity, spontaneity against calculation and try to collect what they can while also demonstrating (and accepting) loss.  Most recently, I have been working through the above themes and ideas (particularly memory, collection and loss) with watercolours. The soft, ghostly marks and hazy liquid transparencies in contrast against a rigid painted armature further explore my interest in presence and absence, collection and loss. In these works the paint drips and stains immediately but can also be washed away and lost.  I have been researching how painting and drawing is used as a therapeutic activity for those suffering from cognitive disorders or diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. My water-colour works in particular borrow from one such popular activity my father engages in, the colouring book. These works begin as a rigid, straight edged and measured framework. I then fill each and every section with varying speed and application in an almost meditative state. They borrow from popularly administered drawings exercises and pattern recognition memory tests for their compositions. These paintings act as and resemble windows, gates, armatures or fences. They are symbols for something attempting to protect and preserve while also allowing things to slip through. Change, movement and loss all exist alongside retention.  The work in this auction is indicative of the newest direction my practice has taken and what will be shown at my next solo exhibition.&quot;