Materials and processes sit at the heart of expression. They become the structure and physical poetry through which an image can exist - its visual language. For me this language bears the imprint of who I am. My hand gives evidence of everything made. Through the tool in use - pen, knife, saw or brush, stick or rag, traces of myself are fashioned into the wood and metal, paper and paint.
These configurations and marks, right down to the faintest scratch will combine to convey a sense of my subject - I hope - but can never be certain of this.
This process is intimately connected to discovery as it happens on a day to day basis with images gradually coming into being, sometimes by default, and always with their finality seeming to be under review. I am mired in this process of ever changing nuances of form and content.
The following qoute is taken from 'A Year in Venice - John Trigg' published by Martins the Publishers
'Making this work -
In Venice I knew that I would have none of the familiar tables and benches, tools and materials, that I have in the ample space of my studio/workshop in Penzance, that there would be limitations and that I would need to adapt. Also that these kind of limitations can be stimulating, even liberating, often opening the way into forms and images that you wouldn't expect... And this city which became my home... I breathed in the history... Venice, adrift in its own time and space - a fragile grandeur being consumed by a voracious tourism and the sea. A microcosm, perhaps, of the world at large... how would all this play into my subject?
Practical formal restraints, like having to work smaller and the need to use water-based paints, soon became my modus operandi... I had a large table in a large room, with a courtyard below, good light, and up on the first floor where I wouldn't get wet feet. This was a good place to begin... Initially it had not been my intention to make sculpture and yet within a few days I was - something heuristic and inevitable about this. Small studies made quickly, born out of the limitations imposed and yet immediate and complete in their own right - 'drawings' made from - wire - paper - glue - and paint...'
