Alex Sutcliffe

A Finger Cuts Light

Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University
Oil and acrylic on canvas
167.6 x 152.4 cm
66 x 60 in

My work uses painterly modes to address the ways in which gestures, swipes, smudges and fingerprints enter into the vernacular of pictures. Inspired by image layers on photo editing programs, I suspend films of oil between coats of acrylic paint. Digital scribbles drafted on my iPad are projected onto the multilayered painting, guiding sections of the top layer to be carefully removed. In A Finger Cuts Light, two painted images oscillate within the negative space of a sharp, gestured excavation of the foremost layer. Emerging from this process of arresting digital shapes in physical form, traces of fingerprints reveal our current desire for digital tactility.