Art Now Cornwall, Tate St Ives 2007

Sax Impey has described the process of making his paintings as a synthesis of mapping or charting the
territory of his thoughts, never knowing exactly where he will end up in a painting. In the past six
years he has been interested in collecting lottery
data, sub-nuclear physics and the decay of sub-atomic particles, aerial reconnaissance charts, medieval
maps, mathematics, and interpretative strategies.
The paintings he has made have often presented an image concealed within an image,as if he preferred
not to embrace an austere interpretation of mathematical data and instead, chose to frame it
within an imaginative and mysterious non-place.
It is true that a carefully calibrated grid based on mathematical data might serve as a reference point
to be subverted in this way. However, to speak of references is to impose logic upon Impey's imagery
that does not sit well with the cognitive wanderings
during which these paintings are made. In Event 9 2005, Impey has used spirals and lines which strike
upwards and across the canvas, elements that call
associations in our mind of ancient maritime charts and weather systems,or even recall the layered paintings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham of fractured ice such as Variations on a Theme (Splintered Ice No 2) 1987. In Impey's painting lines hover in a deep recessive space where the light appears to fall evenly,

fostering the illusion of an aerial space in the centre of the painting, where the eye is pulled into a distance beyond the surface. However, flatness is emphasised too in the structuring of the work; painting, reducing back by sanding the painting's surface and repainting the image. This layering seems to induce a sense of the temporal as much as it does the spatial, reminding us of Naum Gabo's exquisite ability to capture the indwelling forces of natural matter.

©   Susan Daniel - McElroy, Tate Publications 2007