Roger Woods
In Age of Lead (after Ingres, I'Age d'Or) Roger takes on
the great figurative compositions of Poussin, Tiepolo, Ingres
Whilst his technical skill is obvious and he enjoyed exercising it, his radicalism drove him to explore new ways of abstraction in painting the figure. Inspired by Rodin, he began to employ distortion, and changes of focus and scale, constantly breaking open and reworking the images. Influenced later by Jim Dine, Kitaj and Bacon, he translated this into oil, creating different fields of perception and his subtle use of contrapuntal colour is an equivalent for the way in which our mental processes interpenetrate.
Instead of an idealised landscape or interior, he uses imagery from the stage sets of Hollywood musicals. In place of the highly mannered dance groups, these teeming figures, in a Danteesque bacchanal show people in a variety of relationships. These may be our different perceptions of one or several relationships, but also represent the life of desire, of instinct, of the id. The gyroscope, a perfect geometric form, stands for the life of the intellect and the superego and these are linked by the stairway and spiral, both of which allow for movement down as well as up, so this is not about the progress of the soul but about an ongoing psychic process. It is an allegory of consciousness and desire.