In June 2014 the painter Bernhard Gaul sent a letter to The LFTT requesting to work with book 1515 (Poussin by Walter Friedlaender) from his studio in Corgreaghy, Co. Monaghan. Often using an existing painting as a foil to work against, Gaul describes painting as a ‘social praxis’ and ‘poetic experience; a process of finding positions in response to external parameters’. Gaul originally studied theatre, film and media and first came to painting in 1991 with a study of the centre piece of Uccello’s ‘Battle of San Romano’, in which segments of a reproduction were copied onto 99 wooden blocks and later assembled as a fragmented painting. In contrast with the immediacy of theatre Gaul describes a dissatisfaction with the traditional forms of communicating through painting, ‘displaying artefacts only in set-ups that have more connotation of retail than direct exchange’ and says he is ‘still looking for a form of engagement that could combine that direct interaction of the theatre with the form of reflection and expression that I pursue with painting’. It was the process of documenting the method of exchange and reflection that sparked his interest in The LFTT Library. Gaul set up the self-publishing online platform bgx:mag.com in 2007 as  a way of providing a public space which could be used to expose works in progress as well as publishing articles of his own and by others which otherwise might not be easily available. www.bgxmag.com Read More