"The recent work made during my residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris is the result of ongoing research into the combination of abstraction and illusionistic painting.

In a new series, gestural marks hover above subtle suggestions to woven narratives of figures, still lives and invented interior spaces. Veiled by painterly gestures, protruding limbs, folded drapery and architectural details all play out in a painted space that appears like woven fabric.

In other recent work developed during the residency, I have focused more acutely on the edges of paintings and have adapted new approaches to painted grounds that create an illusion to woven textiles. Painted grounds are built up in subtle layers of gel and impasto which result in ribbed, uneven lips along the boundaries of the paintings. These exaggerated limits extend beyond the confines of the rectangular supports, akin to the uneven, organic edges of a piece of fabric or carpet. ­

These new works come out of a period of research focussing on textiles and illusionistic painting in the collections of among others, the department of decorative arts in the Louvre, Château de Fontainebleau and the Gobelins tapestry workshop."

– Gregory Hodge, 2020