My work aims to encapsulate the pace and often intense nature of the modern world, predominantly through figurative oil paintings with elusive narratives. This is a topic that I am continually inspired by, and I try to depict it within my practice. I aim to do this by using commonplace yet confusing imagery - recognisable figures, aspects of relevant architecture, landscape features and mundane objects make up the majority of the subject matter. I combine and slightly distort this rich variety of images on the canvas in a collage-like manner, allowing the compositions to slowly reveal themselves. This combined with often limited, expressive colour palates allows me to construct interesting narratives between subjects, keeping the viewer’s eye wandering over the picture.
The variety and quantity of pictorial language is used to reflect the enormous quantity of images we see all day and every day, particularly through modern technologies such as the smartphone, along with very contemporary platforms such as social media and the internet, and slightly older concepts like mass advertisement. The paintings aim to reflect the ideas of memory and the image deluge, and how these concepts can become convoluted within our minds. I hope that when viewing these paintings others can relate to this feeling of being overwhelmed by modern life, the concept of the mass image and how these ideas can become muddled within our heads.
