Jacob Cartwright
'Bits and Bobs'

Ink and gesso on wood
40 x 38 cm

Jacob Cartwright was born in 1969. He studied at Nottingham Trent University, Academie St Joost, Breda, and Winchester School of Art between 1988 and 1992. He received awards from East Midlands Arts 1994 and the Arts Council of England 1998. He is now based in Manchester. In 2002 he has collaborated on two web projects, and his work with the Manchester media-based collective Pharmakon on video and PowerPoint projection of computer drawings was screened in Manchester, London and Bristol.

"This is one of a series of 'pixel' paintings, originating in drawings made on a computer using Microsoft Paint, a standard 2D graphics application with simple tools.

I started drawing with a mouse, initially just amusing myself, trying out a form of free association. This allowed me to record with immediacy my responses to random stimuli such as memories, scenarios, low-key observations, comments and texts. As the drawings evolved, I began experimenting and playing with composition by overlaying, editing and juxtaposing. I developed these works as 'fictions'.

Pixelation results in a kind of fixative effect, a graphic uniformity. To subvert this predictability I have employed chaotic subject matter. Such an approach has brought into question my assumptions about the quality and primacy of 'real' drawing.

Some drawings I have transposed into paintings, as here. Rather than smoothing out the pixels, I mimicked them within the painting, using brush and pen to apply black writing ink to shaped boards that have been painted in gesso. The quality of the ink suggests a surface instability. It leaves a scant, almost mineral trace on the gesso, a foil to the rigidity of the pixels and implying a material history at odds with its digital origins."