The decisions we didn't make, Talbot Gallery Dublin 2009
.the decisions we didn't make, the words we never spoke, the actions we avoided , the codes we have not broken.....
These words inspire a journey which attempts to describe or resolve the myriad alternates that they present. Subliminal landscapes of intention.Vast choices beset us at every turn, what to do, what not to do, what to take and what to leave behind. Nothing is in and of itself fixed and unmoving, all is ever in constant motion. These things we strive to pin down, affix to page. These words in some way describe a life lived and possibly a future mapped.The reasons for making decisions are as variable and consistently shifting as the weather. Decisions are marks, loaded with emotion and association, fears and dreams. They can be deconstructed only to be reconstructed, teased out only to be rubbed away, in spells, revealing a secret code or a language.
Montgomery exposes this language in her work by a process of staining and rubbing back, layers both deliberate and happenstance are formed using resisting oil based materials with water. It is when the technique looses control that instinctive layers are born.
snowy echo, mixed media on board
after the bluebells, oil on board
the decisions we didn't make, oil on board
Chosen, gouache on found paper
life's little pleasures, oil on board
Voice, mixed media on board
The great escape, oil on board