Karen Stamper, 'Beyond the Painted Skin'

My new Salvage Series moves into abstraction with a breakout from boundaries that feels very relevant in our current times. As well as paint, I work with paper in all its forms with creases, folds, wrinkles and many edges. Small quirky groupings of irregular pieces converse with one another and paint-dipped pieces recreate the feel of an urban boatyard.

Through my recent process of inquiry, it is the surface that lies beneath that reveals its own story. It is not how paint is added - in beautiful lush brushstrokes, too far removed from my hand - but how it has been applied in a functional way: to decorate, protect, hide blemishes, revive, mend and patch, often over many years. It is the touch of the human hand and the accidental marks left behind from a practical fixing that play an important part. House paint became my medium when acrylics felt just too plastic.

I wander freely in my favourite boatyards, like a magpie I collect worn and painted ephemera: offcuts of wood, sticks for stirring paint, paint tin lids and bits of gaudy plastic. I reinvent these fallen throwaways, my small treasures, my misshaped mishaps into new stories. As I construct and deconstruct, more stripped back dynamic compositions reveal themselves. Each piece becomes cheekier and more irreverent; they jut and spill out; flat colour abuts a dribbly paint stick.

The marks and edges become the subject; punchier, each kink, curve and accidental blemish accentuated and celebrated in its own right and gradually this richness of surface allows me to move into exciting new compositions. I feel that I am at an exciting new stage of my collage paintings that is rooted in my previous work.

Growing up on the east coast of Yorkshire as a happy beachcomber, I was attracted to the faded painted wood, scraps of gaudy plastic, brightly coloured fishing floats and nets: all sun dried, sand blasted, salted and weathered. My Dad’s passion was sailing, each Friday we would pack up and spend the weekend on the coast. I would wander freely, exploring and collecting. To this day old boats, harbours, the sun-salty smell of tarpaulin and diesel, and the sound of halyards tapping on a mast are all comforting childhood memories. They have stayed with me and wherever I am in the world, I still naturally gravitate towards the harbour in any coastal town; collecting and collaging urban marks, motifs, textures and colours into my brimming sketchbooks.

Since 2021, my work has moved in a new direction, one which develops and explores my subject with a joyful directness, clarity and freedom. The works in my new Salvage series have escaped the frame, flouted the rules and are bursting with mischievousness and rebellious attitude. As lockdown restrictions eased, I was free to wander once again, and collect weathered and once loved items, with their sense of human presence echoing the passing of time. I loved the joy and freedom in the accidental manmade marks made with little intention and left behind from a practical fixing. I relished this serendipitous mark-making and celebrated the glorification of the unappreciated! The marks themselves became my focus and what excited me was the physicality of the materials: the collaging, patching, sanding, sticking, and fixing of layers of paper, paint and wooden panels.

Far from being pretty and neat, the Salvage series is gobby and loud – the maverick in the corner! It represents an exciting new stage of my collage paintings that is rooted in my previous work. Acknowledging their roots in the gritty practical life of the boatyard, these pieces are boldly unconventional, surprising and playful.