I explore the fine line between knowing, and something that as yet has no association. Creating works that are aesthetically pleasing to keep me engaged but that skirt meanings that are readily apparent.

Do all shapes suggest another like object?
Think of an original shape, a completely new composition. You possibly can, but I doubt if we can recognise it as such. Is any arrangement of forms in a space eventually construed as a map, a plan, a landscape, a view? As if we can never escape our mind rationalising what we see.
How abstract must we be to avoid the associative gaze? Even the purely minimal evokes minimalists.

Have we really seen all the possible colours, surfaces and values?
When seeing a new colour, eventually we will remember when and on what we saw it.
Colour memory is notoriously inaccurate, and therefore what we remember is a perceived likeness, a relationship that our mind may have manufactured.*

How repetitive is a pattern really or is it the expectation of deviation that draws us in?
Our desire for novelty is in direct conflict with our need to assign cause and meaning which renders the "new" the newly familiar.

"This is new, that is old."
"When?" You ask.
"Now or later?"
When I see a painting of any age for the first time, it might as well be newly painted, given that I have never seen it before. Indicators of age are unreliable, misleading and often distracting. The painting was new when it was painted, and it is new when we first see it.

We can believe that we've seen it all before. The possibility that we may not have, keeps us looking.

Ian Wells
2007

"When a human views a colour and later recalls it from memory, there is often a colour shift between the original and remembered colour." pg 1
The Stability of Human Colour Memory and Distribution of Recalled Colours
James Main
Fitzwilliam College May 2006