Note on painting
After some research I settled on red as the predominant colour. Red breeds life. Observation, conversation with visual experiment along side, eventually lead me into staining red over the painted surface at varying moments to capture some aspect of felt intensity. The pouring over the painting at various stages came from a desire to convey a sense of trapping the whole experience, along with the colour red this idea implies the constant pumping of living tissue, it also implied the ideas of entrapment, burst ear drums, external sound blocked off and lead to ideas of obsession and addiction. A different sense of movement and breath. The paintings are set to convey a new sense of movement which is driven by obsession and addiction.
Forward by Michelle Holland PHD
Hedonic neurocircuitry exists within the brain to encourage engagement with behaviors that promote survival and reproductive success, acting to provide positive reinforcement of feeding, maternal, sexual and other social behaviors. Addiction occurs when this reward system is decoupled from these natural behaviors, usually as a result of repeated exposure to something which activates neurotransmission specifically in these brain areas. The stimulus could take many forms, but the underlying mechanisms are the same. Repeated exposure changes gene expression within specific brain areas, in turn facilitating and strengthening neuronal pathways facilitating a sense of reward associated with exposure to the source of reinforcement. Addiction is differentiated from traditional learning, as once the external stimulus is withdrawn, the new pathways that have been created serve no benefit, resulting in a dysphoric state known as withdrawal.
Note from the Dancer
Achieved by the obsessive repetition of exercise and passing through pain barriers until the brain produces enough endorphins to create a morphine effect.
In the event of my dancer suicide, appeared the life that was, in the form of paintings. (I never saw myself think before) To be a Dancer. I can only see in the mirror what I want you to see of me. Yet here are images of my inner thoughts, calculations.
Holding back the dancer a little to not loose focus on the exercise. Pain barriers, addicted to the idea that more is important. I’m looking for them. The music is painful and I have to feel it deepen every time. Driven with the desire for my daily dose of adrenalin. I am not heavy or stiff like the unattended human structure, I am free to direct ever cell of my construction through the space and sound, conscious only of my purpose. Rushing on endorphins.
My brain only knows these connections to sound and emotions, and equations of weight, balance, momentum and flight. I’ve made it do so for 30 years, imbedded mental patterns, but now the adrenalin has gone and I can no longer walk for more than 20 minutes. The adrenalin has gone and I am heavy and weak. The adrenalin has gone and I don’t know where I belong.
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Desmond Hamilton
13 March 2012 at 10:55
I love these paintings by Leonard Sexton. I love the idea of the dancers addiction to their art, so skillfully captured within the paintings. With each painting, it appears, that the image picks up speed until a frenzy is reached. In the final painting the image becomes lost in the frenzied movement until, at last, we can see only the movement of where the dancer has been. Nirvana (for the dancers) has been reached — they have achieved their ‘high’.
These are great paintings.