Tammy Quanes’ work is an unorganised story. It revolves around colourful paintings expressing tension, mystery, memory, childhood recollections, ghost stories and tall tales. Simultaneously questioning and exploring memory, the use of personal stories and adopting other stories, via archives or conversations, depicts an odd narrative. Her work is absorbed with depicting the woman as the central character in the story.
Through remembered ghost stories, an interpretation of these ideas occur in an abstract way. My paintings comprise strong, bright acrylic or oil paint, thickly painted onto paper and board; and in places used thinly to reveal a truth. At times the paint may be scraped off or wiped clean, but something remains.
The edges left blank is a theme incorporated into some of the paper pieces. The answers my work prompts lie in the viewer's memory, in collective stories, connections, misconnections, misfires and stories gone awry.
'The house still stands, abandoned. We are waiting to buy it and turn it into a holiday home so no one can live there long term. But it is haunted by her, the local school children say. I knew Mary, and she would so be up for a haunting'
'Mary is my aunt, my father. She has done something that is not quite clear. Did she say something to you? She is from my hometown, in Italy, Ukraine, Ireland. She is us all'
'"You can’t love your sons if you divorced their father." What has she done? What happened in the house? This is unknown, forgotten. But the children know not to go there'
'I am calling in sick. I am tired when I walk any distance. I can’t go on like this and I miss my health. I took it for granted that I would always be well'
'She was my uncle, my mother. We went to the village and to see her there. Kupala night is 6th July. Do not swim on 6th of July. Mary died on this night'
Research
'In an attempt to be, to do, to paint, to create, to see, where am I now?'
'Death by gorse'
'And in looking brightly to the future, the past becomes clearer'
'The red in between your hands when you hold them over your eyes'
'Secretive Attack'