Sweet Shop
This general store in Phuket, South Thailand on a sleepy Sunday afternoon was ran by a lovely old couple. The shop sold refreshments, sweets, tobacco chewing gum, Pocky Sticks and an assortment of general store items including newspapers. It was very dark at the back which looked unused. Customers were served at a front counter and I tried to peer into the darkness behind yet dared not ask what was back there.
Focalism
This painting attempts to capture the focus of attention as Mr Sweet Shop intently watches Mrs Sweet Shop preparing something unseen behind the counter. Focalism is an experimental series of figurative and impressionistic paintings which I've been developing for a while as a way to explore how our brains encode and decode complex information. We use a kind of compression or fill in for peripheral vision, while we concentrate our minds eye on important or perhaps essential information at any one given moment. Our focus can change instantly depending on what happens, where with whom.