Rachael Weitzman

From the Garden of Eden to the present day the park has been a metaphor for man’s relationship with nature both in his attempts to construct an ideal setting for himself and how he plays his part in it.

Contemporary life is increasingly a  fight to experience the physical world directly; a need to create a space that excludes all the other media of information and sensation.
When people in parks, often motivated ,perhaps, by a sense of nostalgia, seek to re-discover an unmediated space this inevitably creates a kind of bathos. The attempt at direct social interaction in a real rather than cyber space is accompanied by an inevitable self-consciousness.

This group of paintings depicts  the park as an arena and catalyst for the narratives that arise in this pursuit of leisure. Each painting is a little story, recognizable to any observer from personal experience. These are stories of the interactions and frictions that occur between people and their families, friends or strangers when they attempt to  devote time to recreation. Sometimes there is just minor irritation; sometimes the threat of real menace. There is a tension in the urban park between its purpose as a space for healthy relaxation, the pursuit of pleasure and the actuality of its availability to all comers.

We’ve all been there.