“At a time when more and more artists are stepping away from the canvas in favour of their computer screens, the luscious tactility of paintings drenched in heavy impasto feels almost wickedly satisfying.

Wet on wet is not a popular technique with painters these days, probably because it’s extremely difficult to master. The paint needs to be freshly mixed before each application and laid on thickly in one stoke to retain its vitality. If it’s not exactly the right consistency it’ll smear into the layer below and become featureless mud. But the satisfying immediacy of this technique comes with high risk – hundreds of dollars of expensive art materials can be rendered worthless with one wrong scrape of a palette knife – but, when the painting succeeds, as Trolove demonstrates, the result is sensational.

Working wet on wet denies the painter the indulgence of fussing with meticulous detail. Features have to be reduced to their essence and modelled broadly with contrasting light and shadow. This necessary simplifying of form means the faces Trolove paints share a similar, boldly sculptural structure. When the colours used are more restricted, as in Eclipse for example, perceptions of depth are suppressed and the face almost becomes a phantom image, partially submerged beneath the turbulently knifed surface of paint. With so much detail left out, the unconscious mind inevitably tries to fill in what it considers to be missing, ‘joining the dots’ to recreate something familiar.”

– From the catalogue essay ‘Contemporary Baroque’ by Curator Mark Hutchins-Pond.