Painting

Tom Philbin

HANDS

Simple, abstract, absurd, humorous, childlike, with a focus on being intensely vague. My work could take a place outside of current world affairs or narratives, yet it doesn’t ignore them either. Our Irish history and society was reliant on cattle, pigs, fat, and work by hand. A hand, your hand, my hand. What have your hands done, or not done? The hand is an individual thing, yours alone unique. The state of the world today may be a macrocosm of the microcosm. I am the microcosm of this macrocosm. Soap symbolises purity and cleanliness, which I am not, yet this purity is an aspiration. I use soap, melted down animal fat. I use hair, the fat along with the hair, the smell, reminds me of a cow. I use hair which represents death, taking longer to decompose. Ancient materials used, with universal associations, in the present.

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