Of objecthood and anthropomorphism: Minimalism and painting, Edwina Leapman, visit to studio 17 April 2012

During the 1960s British artists were aware of Minimalism’s sculptural and materialist questioning of relational form, and of an American painterly response to this radical aesthetic challenge. The resulting critique of painting’s internal compositional effect of ‘containing’ relational ideas, its problems with illusion and questions about ‘objecthood’ continue to inflect painting as abstract practice. Leapman responds to the rigours of developing a philosophical minimal-materialist practice by exploring various propositions about how process, surface, colour, can be wrought into a painterly motif without disrupting attention to the overall grasp of painted surface. The immediate sensation of painting’s objecthood in Leapman’s work is predicated on binding colour specifically to surface rather than to compositional or relational device. Colour is methodically dispersed across the surface of the painting, registering interest in light, its physics or substance. The impact on the viewer of dynamic warm/cool tonal intervals, organized through different processual concerns at different stages in development of Leapman’s work creates an affective timing in colour’s reception, making real-time optical demands on the viewer as they move around the paintings. The results retain sensitivity to pace and touch, bringing psychological sense to defining resolution.