Artist Statement

As a contemporary painter I have two main concerns; firstly, to explore the loss of utopias and the failure of modernism through my own constructed world made up of images abstracted from a mediated society. Secondly, to use the materiality of paint as a means of playing with the unreality of painting and thereby further enhance the artificiality of my model.

Situated between consciousness and dream, the scenes of petrified urban non-places convey a sense of stillness, of waiting for something, of helplessness, alienation and isolation. The characters are outsiders in a world that is removed from nature, living in a world of broken promise. The displaced figures are searching but failing to find their ideal.

Recycling photographic images is my starting point, collaging them to create a basis for my painting. Through a series of charcoal and paint studies the initial ideas are condensed and abstracted before its final transformation in oil paint.

By appropriating and manipulating imagery into synthetic ‘realities’ my aim is to raise questions about the way we function and live in a modern world. What was it we hoped and planned for? Where did our dreams go?