Charles Mayton’s paintings are bright, multicoloured jumbles sometimes consisting just of abstract, glitchy swathes of colour, other times featuring a mélange of overlapping images. You’ll spot hands, things that look like bits of meat or animal, loads of staring eyes, as well as computer icons like the ‘pointing hand’ cursor or a triangular ‘play’ arrow. This technological theme extends to the pure colour pieces too, which always contain an amorphous, unpainted area of white canvas, the outline of which appears vaguely jagged or blocky, like some primitive, 8-bit graphic display.
The idea, in short, seems to be all about creating a hybrid between traditional, physical painterly effects and virtual, technocratic motifs. It’s hardly new territory for painting, but this American does an effective job.