My interests in postcards lie generally with landscape and tourist style postcards. I am interested in subverting these postcards by painting them to scale on 6ft by 4ft canvases. I try to paint these postcards in an almost photorealistic style while replacing the skies from perfect blue skies to more apocalyptic and surreal skies. These skies are taken from various sources including sunsets, aurora borealis and stormy skies..
People as a rule when sending postcards on holiday write the same kind of things, generally positive generalities about their holidays. These including; the weather is lovely, the hotel is very good etc. It is this contrast between the positively spun texts on the postcards and the subverted fronts that I find interesting. It asks questions like; are these holidays actually as good as people say they are, what do people perceive as beautiful and relaxing and do people really notice the things that happen around them?
I find interest in the postcard and other holiday imagery paintings of Malcolm Morley and the strange, slightly ominous paintings of Peter Doig. The writings of Urry and MacCannell about the tourist gaze are also interesting as they look into why people buy postcards. This is also forming the basis of my dissertation.