Since graduating from Goldsmiths’ College of Art in 1988, Ian Davenport has experimented with everyday tools such as watering cans, electric fans and nails, designed to exercise and limit his manipulation of paint. His desire to investigate the paradox between control and chance drives various means of execution, leading him to emphasise the act of painting as his subject matter, observing that ‘the how to paint became the what to paint’. He is well-known for using hypodermic syringes to pour liquid household paint onto surfaces. In 2008, Davenport noticed that the poured paint pooled into puddles on the floor; this visual contradiction between controlled, precise lines that then merged freely, autonomous and self-determining, embodied the paradox between control and chance. He has incorporated the puddles into his recent ‘Puddle Paintings’, which demonstrates Davenport's process-led approach. He contemplates the colour harmonies of each composition, each possessed of their visual sense of timing, rhythm, interval and accent.