The BODYWORK Collection

The BODYWORK Collection is a study of human form in everyday situations.  Using the close up image of the subject being viewed forces the observer to construct the remaining image as a whole; it also shows how interesting and beautiful the commonplace routine can be.

BODYWORK as a collection of paintings became an interest for me after a comment from a client who had commissioned a set of portraits.  She was asking why I had used only half of the image I had taken when photographing the faces of her children within my work, offsetting the face on the canvas.  I tried to explain my fascination of narrative, and in particular the way some books and films keep you asking questions throughout; in some cases without any clear explanation at the end, leaving the participant able to conclude the outcome.  In the same way, looking at paintings of human faces and attempting to build a bigger picture of the subject makes a far more interesting composition.  I then took this idea a stage further and so the BODYWORK Collection was created.

John Giller