Benjamin Hannavy Cousen

Benjamin Hannavy Cousen has developed an abstract protocol for painting that materializes, and thus makes visible, the ‘colour unconscious’ we hardly notice in literature as seen in The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch, 1978) and 1984 #2 (George Orwell, 1949) and works from Asimov and Virginia Woolf. Systematically mapping the sequence of colour words occurring in his chosen text, the artist creates paintings by laying down a line of paint for each colour in the sequence of its appearance across the book. The paintings thus reveal the unseen, but, for the readers, unconsciously registered, coloured imaginary of major works of fiction, while the resulting physical build-up of his paint application creates an unexpected dimensionality for painting that takes on almost sculptural form.