Michael Raedecker

Michael Raedecker's paintings are often of empty buildings; imaginary looking scenes that we may have seen in a film or dream, that appear uninhabited and lonely. There are never any people in the paintings, just empty shells where we can imagine what's inside. Raedecker uses acrylic paint and thread on canvas - using thread to build up detail and density. The rest of the canvas tends to be blank colour; adding to the isolation of the buildings. The colour schemes Raecker uses tend to add to the unsettling quality of his canvases; gloomy colours and shadows; but with the buildings emanating light, making us intrigued to what lies inside. There is no obvious narrative to Raedecker's work, instead he allows viewers to make this up themselves. He gives clues towards a narrative through depicting parts of a scene and creating atmosphere in his paintings.

In my own work I am starting to look at creating canvases that look at society, but have a more sinister undertone due to the colours used. In my Carnage Bar Crawl paintings I started to do this, where I isolated two students and detached them from the scene and the crowd. I put a spotlight on them, in the same way that Raedecker puts a spotlight on his buildings; through colour and isolation. I am interested in having mainly one part of detail on the canvas, and leaving the rest blank in the way that Raedecker does. It highlights part of the story without giving too much of the narrative away. In terms of memory, it emphasises that we don't have perfect recall; only remembering parts of an event, and other parts are much more hazy or even obsolete. In my work on Jessops and HMV closing down, I have started to look at qualities similar to that of Raedecker's paintings - the lack of people or presence of life which take away clues of time and place. We know that the administration of Jessops/HMV is a recent event, but our knowledge of that is the only clue, as the emulsion prints don't hint at whether they are set in the past, present or future. I'm becoming more interested in this slightly dystopian view of society - images of society with a slightly concerning undertone; - of shops closing down, students misbehaving and youths rioting. Although I used to create fairly obvious narratives by collaging several images on the wall, I am now interested in displaying only parts of the story, just clues, in the way that Raedecker does. I want to enable the viewer to fill in the rest of the narrative of what the work's about.