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Philip Taaffe explores the potential of ornamentation through the medium of painting. He draws on patterns he has seen in museums, books and on his travels to Morocco, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt, and links them to his own world of imagination and memory. ‘Intersecting Balustrades’, for example, references the Art Nouveau design of a wrought-iron balustrade in a library in New Jersey, whilst ‘Il Terrazzo’ depicts the floor patterns of his former Naples studio.
His painting is a dialogue with different cultures. ‘Very often I have the feeling that I have a memory of a specific place and a specific time that is part of my genetic heritage—an ancient consciousness that emerges while I am working,’ Taaffe writes. For him, the ‘cultural energy’ of a particular time and place is condensed or crystallised within the ornament.