Deborah Poynton

"I have just carried on doing what I did as a child. It’s been one long continuous stream of making pictures to feel a sense of connectedness. Painting this way is a wordless exclamation….Sometimes people get cross with it because they hate that it’s not about anything, and that I just carry on with all this realism. This fiddle-faddle, this knitting."

"Who cares if you can paint something that looks real? It is totally banal. There is no worth in that, except as a kind of sport, an exercise in hand-eye co-ordination. Now painting something that seems to contain reality – that is truly moving."

"There is relief in dwelling in a not-new picture, in embracing the foolishness of the formula, in discovering the beauty of each small detail that is woven into the picturesque whole. And while we are there, noticing the leaves, the clouds, the way the paint has described the folds of silk, perhaps something indescribable can be felt."

"I lived in many different places as I was growing up. This gave me an awareness of difference, the understanding that security cannot be found in the outside world."

"In life, as in pictures, there is only the Romantic. Behind the scenes of our lives, there is everything unspoken, unseen, unknown and nothing."

"Art is an offering, a show that mirrors the show we form around ourselves as we move through our scenery."

"Art is always artful, a ruse, a trick. It is a court fool, jumping up and down, aping its masters. Art is part of the dream that we inhabit."

"Poynton's paintings are more about the act of looking, of exposing the "trickery" behind traditional artistic practices, than they are windows onto a surreal world."

"By constructing spaces, placing slightly discordant objects amongst seemingly natural landscapes, Poynton creates a tension within her work that is intended to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of the act of perception."

"While most of her work can be categorized as realism, a few series depart from her usual aesthetic in a more abstract project. Her current exhibition, Scenes of a Romantic Nature, draws on her connection to Germany by referencing the landscape paintings of German artist Caspar David Friedrich."

"Her work often conflates tropes from traditional art history, from compositional techniques to poses of her subjects, and the indices of contemporary life to create a sense of chaotic inscrutability; in this way, Poynton creates work which is aesthetically engaging and intellectually confounding."

"Viewing Poynton's work is a personal experience. The story that comes to your mind is different from that of someone else. There is no right or wrong. All ideas and associations are welcome in the world of Deborah Poynton."