Artist Statement

I spend a lot of time watching. I watch screens, people, my studio, my paintings, the walls, the world. I was raised to question and criticise. I don’t accept things for what they are just because that’s how it is and has always been. I’ve lived, since childhood, outside systematic institutional structures. I reject being confined by binaries or patriarchal expectations and my paintings reflect this mindset; free forming androgynous figures play, swim, balance in a land without failure or shame.

Instinctive mark-making leads my paintings, allowing imagined dystopian places and organic structures to form. I often start with an initial gestural mark, then I come back to it and see if anything has appeared. A face? A contorting limb? A building? I start to see the patterns in the brush strokes the same way I see a frog made of clouds in the sky. I use a solvent soaked brush to remove and carve into the painted surface, wiping away areas with rags to push the image further. I block in areas of colour, negotiating positions and tensions between places and figures to create imagined glimpses into how I see the world. The works are fluid in their display, grids of paintings have the potential to then erratically disperse, allowing for their meaning to be redefined.