Artist Statement
Primarily depicting the human figure, I create luminous and ethereal spaces on the surface of my canvases. Bodies and objects oscillate in mysterious territories conjured from light washes of colour, often threatening to slip from a viewer’s grasp completely. Conceptualising the body as a porous vessel through which forces flow, I engages in a highly personal meditation on my experiences, while also alluding to more universal questions of political histories, borders and health. I looks to the invisible things we carry within us; how memories and feelings become embodied rather than stored solely in one’s mind. This ‘psychic map’, unavoidably incorporates troubling darkness alongside lightness and joy. Residing in the subtle delicacy of the paintings is an acute sharpness.
Alongside such those motifs my practice also gestures towards healing. The series Rapid Shifts (2018–ongoing) depicts talismanic snake-like forms alongside, or sometimes in place of, the human figure. Here I zooms into the molecular, with translucent coils imagined as pulling out information embedded within biological cells, and thus detoxifying the blood.
At the heart of my practice is an exploration of tension; that which we feel within our own bodies, and that which exists between ourselves and others. I wish for my paintings to operate from behind the eyes, or from behind the senses that we know, to cut through some layers and to create a world in which one does not know the rules.
