Kevin Malloy?s new paintings are characterised by the depiction of figures and objects that engage with ideas of how paintings are seen. These paintings continue Malloy's long interest in the metaphysics and craft of painting, but the figurative imagery is immediately accessible to the viewer. We don't know what or who the figures represent, but we easily
relate to the shadowy, mysterious, slyly humorous silhouettes. These are warm paintings despite their intellectual foundation.

In these paintings, the depicted images emerge from a matrix or system of tennis-ball-sized painterly marks, sometimes brightly coloured and sometimes subdued. This energetic 'mark system' operates on many visual levels. The individual marks serve to deny the reality of the depicted images?always reminding us of their artifice. At the same time, the swirling fields of discs create their own illusory space that interacts subtly with the depicted space. Some paintings operate in the shallow, orderly space of a
bas-relief, and in others a misty depth unfolds. In all the paintings, the energetic marks interact with the apparent stillness of the imagery to create a gentle and hypnotic tension.

The word 'saccadic' in the paintings' titles refers to the discrete, jerky movements of the eye in its constant attempt to understand what it encounters.