Spencer Sweeney Larry Rasberry and The High Steppers

Spencer Sweeney’s Larry Rasberry and The High Steppers takes the human figure as its principal subject, with his energetic paintings encompassing the genres of portraiture and reclining nude, and shifting between styles. He has spoken about painting as a ‘balancing act between careful consideration and reckless abandon, both of equal import’ and this attitude is evident throughout the exhibition. The works are developed intuitively in a solitary and contemplative studio practice which involves the artist reaching a state of tension or delirium, allowing his creativity to bridge the conscious mind with dreams and fantasies.

The title of the show emerged from a similar unfiltered process. Sweeney scrawled the band name on a loose sheet while painting, after hearing it on the radio. He uncovered it again later, when preparing for the show and felt it produced a compelling but fun disconnect with the enigmatic personalities in the paintings. The random association creates a push and pull with their imagery, lending a set of light-hearted ideas, however misleading, which can be brought to interpret them.

For Sweeney, on a conceptual level, his method relates to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) understanding of the ‘active imagination’, a meditation technique designed to welcome and track the formation of personalities, narratives and environments from the unconscious. Sweeney has effectively worked in this way since his school days, often painting indoors during breaktime under the supervision of his art teacher. Through this formative method, new characters and ambiguous spaces suggest themselves and are then supplemented with additional information and sources from photography and film. Images are worked and reworked into a final composition, with Sweeney creating the illusion of movement with his strokes, developing textures and pattern through a varied repertoire of mark making, often culling or drawing on art historical precedents.