statement

My artistic practice is grounded in the act of looking as a form of communication so to observe the fracture lines from ever-present unspoken social expectations. The paintings become diary entries that not only document the complex relationship with self, but also comment on a larger retaliation against the digital era. Surrounded by screens and distraction, social media has created the illusion of connection by eating away at our privacy and agency.

Like doom scrolling; my painting practice is cultivated under under a hyper state of focus where one mentally disconnects from the body - entering an outer self state of being, forcing the body to both switch yet stay alert. Running on a subconscious adrenaline which I call the flow state. The use of the self portrait comes from a similar compulsive nature, using my own image in such a repetitive way that I become blind to my own image - like the distortion created by repeating a word over and over. Abstracting and disconnecting, my practice allows me to fall away into my own numb yet aware rhythm of image over saturation, using my body as a tool, and a motif in my work.

Over the past couple years I have built a relationship with the self timer function with the polaroid/iPhone camera as an act of slowing down. Naive notions of play constantly dance into the compositions as a way to capture the alienation created from wanting to keep up. Longing for clarity, yet receiving uncertainty, my works nudge at the fragilities of being young and free yet emotionally paralysed.

Like film stills my paintings have a stillness and cinematic quality, allowing me to play with the idea of time passing, but also larger tensions of personal and public, being passive and alert, abstract and figurative, dreams and reality. For me a painting goes beyond the canvas, its interacts with the rest of the space and the other images, so to play with tensions within the composition after the paintings leave the studio is just a much a part of the practice as the act of placing paint on canvas. Allowing the new stories and readings to appear between them, collaging together different sound bites from my visual non linear diary.