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About This Work
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
—Samuel Beckett
This painting takes Irish writer Samuel Beckett’s famous words and brings them into a visual field, where they become embedded in pattern, colour, and rhythm. Using a typographic system I created, I pull apart, repeat and layer the words until they form a dense, interwoven composition. This becomes a depiction of the cycle of trying, failing, and beginning again.
In this work I’m looking at how effort becomes apparent through repetition, and how repetition builds weight and momentum. The colour palette starts with calm blues at the top and moves to more lively reds and oranges towards the bottom. This shift in colour resembles the feeling of things warming up and getting energetic, messy, and sometimes slightly unhinged the longer you keep going. It’s a familiar trajectory! Perseverance can often feel repetitive and frustrating, but it’s generally full of momentum.
By burying a familiar quote inside a busy composition I hope to acknowledge all of those little building blocks of effort that keep things moving forward, even if it’s just a shuffle.