The self-portrait has become associated with a fleeting digital image. It has perhaps also become tainted by its conflation with product endorsement or by its use as a backdrop for one’s opinions and agenda. I wished to create a self-portrait that acknowledged that the self is created from communion and that the present zeitgeist of ‘individualism’ is, in some way, a shaky societal foundation. In order to convey this, I included my parents within the piece, giving them the primary focus within the painting.
My most recent work hints at presences beyond the edges of the canvas. This seems in keeping within contemporary life, in which those we interact with are not always tangible. This particular painting attempts to capture the sensation of being watched by invisible eyes.
Coming to Terms with a Life of Almost Unlimited Leisure
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2019
Oil on Canvas
The title of this piece was appropriated from a description of characters within J.G. Ballard’s novel, ‘Cocaine Nights’. The painting depicts the pursuit of unlimited leisure and the potential repercussions of doing so. It reveals the paradox of the desire for stability or happiness and humanity’s capacity for self-sabotage in its acquisition.
This convoluted painting depicts a crowd of figures revelling in the chaos that surrounds them. They watch as the subjects in the foreground attempt to control their hose and excitable dog. The painting depicts a moment in which the domestication of society seems to implode. It hints at the folly in our attempts to control the world around us, both on a macrocosmic and microcosmic level. It also posits that perhaps human beings are not intended to live segregated from each other in houses and rooms enclosed from the rest of their communities. Theses dwellings act as a social carapace as well as a physical one. The physical separation encourages individualism: those who live outside of the walls of one’s house are either observers or the observed.
Running themes within my work include humanity’s fraught relationship with the natural world and the increasingly artificial nature of existence. The piece depicts a dramatic jungle scene split into 5 planes of colour. This painting (as with many others), was constructed from a pool of images. I took elements of the original images and disassociated them from their original contexts, then combined them to create a new narrative. I often create compositions that ostensibly appear to include black and white narratives and symbols, yet perhaps hint at an underlying complex history or epistemology.
This piece alludes to the present compulsion to extend human existence. The title is a play on the phrase, ‘pushing up daisies’. It depicts figures picking up daises before they can be ‘pushed up’. One figure checks to see how many daisies the other has collected, whilst the other naps. Whispers of figures observe their activities from the walls.
A couple walks their leashed dog in a fragmented countryside and bump into a wild dog. The painting depicts the moment that both animals simultaneously sight a bone lying on the ground between them. There is a peculiar tension created in the couple being confronted with a situation which teeters on the precipice of their control.
