bob whittaker
Bob Whittaker is a Liverpool-based artist and musician whose work explores the relationship between music and visual form. His paintings translate elements of musical structure - pitch, duration, repetition and silence - through a deliberately restricted language of vertical lines and space. His work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally.
I am interested in what remains when something heard and experienced through time is translated into visual form. My practice draws on my experience as both a musician and a painter.
My paintings begin with transcriptions of fragments of music. I am drawn to reduction and to the tension that can exist within apparently simple forms. Each painting is restricted to a single visual element: a vertical line of consistent width. Within this deliberately narrow vocabulary, each work follows the music note for note. Nothing is added or omitted for visual effect.
The process of translation changes the way that structure is experienced. Relationships encountered through time become relationships of line and space; something sequential becomes present all at once. The source remains embedded in the painting but is no longer necessary to its reading.
