Artist's Statement
My practice is an exploration into self, fantasy and desires.
I am strongly influenced by my childhood fantasies; fairytales, castles and the loss of innocence. I am fascinated by the dichotomy between our fantasies and our real desires. I explore these ideas through films and performances but ultimately they reside in my paintings. My painting seeks a magical land of fantasy and fairytale.
When I use paint to represent my ideas I work to conjure the illusion of skin and containment in the body. For me paint is a way of building up cells and filth to allude to the surface of the skin. My painting makes the disgusting and repulsive become beautiful. The containable becomes uncontainable. The body becomes fluid, unfixed.
My present work delves deeper into this idea of containment; capturing the feeling that it is something awkward and difficult. This has brought me back to my teenage years, examining the desire to be something that the body won’t let itself be. I am thinking a lot about how we are able to stay in our own body and how the skin keeps us in. At the moment I am trying to push these ideas of containment of soul as well as body, stretching that sense of awkwardness.
Artist Curriculum Vitae
Date of Birth: 21 June 1986
Education:
2005-08 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art & Design
2004-05 Diploma in Foundation Studies (Art & Design) and Level 3 Award in Life Drawing, Chelsea College of Art & Design Shows and Exhibitions
Prizes: Catlin Prize 2009
Shows and Exhibitions:
Currently a resident artist at The Centre for Recent Drawing.
2-4 Highbury Station Rd LONDON N1 1SB,+44 (0) 2032396936 Charity
No.1123530, www.c4rd.org.uk
2010 ‘In the Forest’ Residencies 1-7 June
2010 ‘At Home’ Group show at Rollo comtempary Art
23 February to 23 April 2010
2009 ‘The Caltin Prize’ 2009
Catlin Art Prize is determined by a panel of judges, including artist Toby Ziegler and the prominent collector, Robert Devereux
2009 ‘At Home’ Curated by Maxine Leslau and Liegh Message In a group show at Maddox Gallery from the 13th- 21st March
2008 ‘Orion contemporary’, curated by Dagmara Budzbon and Andrés Olow Clase