Deanna Lewis is an abstract painter whose practice explores the idea of traces; various unintended intimations that reveal something has been or has happened.  To Deanna, a mark provides a narrative, its composition perhaps revealing something about the action that created it.

 

She is interested in how a spontaneous interaction with a surface may be translated into marks through the expenditure of materials; how they can be mapped out and preserved as a form of material memory. For this particular collection of work Deanna studied finger prints left on computer screens, adding and removing oil paint to embody them.

 

The white areas of her paintings represent the idea of an ‘edge’, a conceptual and formal device used to emphasise the concentrated detail along the line she creates. 

 

Overall Deanna aims to draw attention to the overlooked traces around us.  She does so by working from found compositions, came across by chance, and recontextualising them into a gallery environment.  Elevating them onto a white wall allows the marks to be studied not overlooked and faces her audience with the intricacy marks she has captured in her paintings.