If there is such a thing as a collective consciousness, then Dexter Dalwood's paintings are its natural by-product. His works embody our fascination with the private environments of the rich and famous, functioning as a substitute for documentation of the secluded worlds they depict. Dalwood rightly claims to be a latter-day history painter, taking it upon himself to visualise notorious locations that have become embedded in the popular consciousness.

Dalwood's paintings stem from his own imaginings, enhanced by exhaustive research of eyewitness testimonies, biographies, available imagery and personal memoirs. He distils these varied sources into small and meticulously constructed collages, which he uses as the basis for his paintings. Sharon Tate's House (1998), for instance, was inspired by a passage in Vincent Bugliosi's book Helter Skelter that describes the room where Tate was murdered by members of the infamous Manson family. In the absence of an actual photograph of Tate's home, we can view Dalwood's interpretation of the crime scene as the only visual documentation available to feed our macabre curiosity. Still, as the artist himself has stated, we are subconsciously aware that what we are being shown is probably very different from the original scene.

Many of Dalwood's works are about death, or, more precisely, they are concerned with the locations or circumstances connected to someone's death. Brian Jones's Swimming Pool (2000) deals with a subject that has remained in the popular imagination since 1969: the mystery surrounding the death of Rolling Stones' founding member Brian Jones. The painting could almost be a still from a documentary, lingering on the details of the site of Jones's untimely death, and bringing to mind the arguments surrounding it. (The authorities asserted that his drowning was due to a drugs overdose, while conspiracy theorists claimed he was murdered.) Whatever actually happened, Dalwood presents us with the one piece of evidence he can produce – his own rendering of the location where it happened.

Dexter Dalwood (born 1960 in England) lives and works in London.