Ken Wentworth

I view my work as working with artefacts, the magazine image is the original artefact, and by painting over it I enact a form of reverse restoration. Through the painting over, highlighting and accentuating elements of the original, I reveal symbolism within the image... but instead of revealing new colour and form through a process of removing dirt and accumulated blockages to meaning, as with traditional restoration. I reveal layers in reverse by adding, highlighting and exposing elements of the image, investigating visually and metaphorically the culture that created it.  I make a puzzle or fragmented mosaic out of an image that had an initial appearance of wholeness and uniformity as a printed image on paper, now reworked to be a constructed physical representation of the puzzling  and fragmented collective cultural and psychological space that we encounter on a daily basis.