*Please see Key at bottom of the page for metadata of individual paintings. Also, see Selected Works for larger images of individual works.
Exhibition Statement
Post lockdown I struggled with myself over a desire to let go without being blindly impulsive in my work. I wanted to see how I could carry through impulsive and gestural brushwork into larger scale work after months of painting within the confines of my room. Whilst prohibited from the studios, I found myself working predominately onto small surfaces, mostly found or reclaimed book boards, mainly with acrylic paints but also inks and occasionally oil paint with some becoming collage.
These were quick paintings, with the intention of collectivising my current mannerisms and imagery into one lexicon. They remain as an insightful window into the effect that a sudden loss of linearity and structure and how this can reciprocally effect ones routine and mental well being. Lockdown opened our minds to the potentiality of our freedoms being restricted and lost, a fearful prospect. The grids and lattices began to appear when lockdown lifted, were a response to this period and the work that I made whilst in quarantine.
Ilya Kabakov’s fragment paintings also helped inspire the musing and fusing of bodies, objects and space into uncanny oblong fragments which I could then choose to block out or leave be. Slightly reminiscent of the window frames I had become accustom to peering out of, the larger paintings such as ‘Bottledumb Babylon’ and ‘Wagon Wheel with Brain Juice’ began to serve as movements, which could capacitate my emotions surrounding future dread and potentially graduating into a polarised and fractured post pandemic society. They also allowed me to retain presence within each moment working on subtracting and adding glazes, slowly , diluting personal challenges into a chaotic, often maddening yet methodical continuous meditation.
Room 1
