Fine Art
Perturbed Crescendo (2019)
It’s a gradual process. No one wakes up one day suddenly unable to make sense of their own thoughts and feelings. Mood, anxiety and personality disorders simmer, stagnate and eventually overflow. This triptych attempts to explore that progression, the mental degradation, through a clash of two media. The underlying photographic ‘reality’ becoming overwhelmed by the erratic, unpredictable and ephemeral paint work.
My work has always addressed the troubled mind, typically communicating through my own image. A personal battle with stress, anxiety and depression between May-September 2019 lead me here, both cathartically and inquisitively.
Above: Acrylic, ripped cotton textiles, modelling paste, paper, glue, digital print on board, mounted onto MDF board.
Above: Acrylic on copier paper.
Mania (2018)
“The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones… But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity.”
– Kay Redfield Jamison
Above: Acrylic on digital photograph printed onto canvas.
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.”
– Dylan Thomas
Above: Acrylic and/or oil pastel on digital photograph printed onto copier paper.
Merging Media: Differing Depictions of Self (2018)
Self-portraiture has been a means of artistic and cathartic expression for me for a number of years now. What began as a simple matter of convenience (you try finding a model at 2am when an idea strikes and your camera starts talking), soon became a therapeutic necessity; a creative and expressive outlet for emotion and anxiety.
The images included in this series play with media and what is real. The photographs may at first appear fairly ordinary, but look closer. Why is she lying on the floor? How many fingers? Then, add to this uncomfortable uncertainty, the floating layer of paint; giving each image a whole new dimension, both physically and conceptually. I’m not fond of intrusively forcing narrative or constructing commentary, but to me these images are about questioning the underlying emotion; reconsidering potentially ambiguous motivation; looking for the consciousness hiding underneath the physical action.
The first four images in the series shown below: acrylic on acetate layered over digital photograph collage printed onto 200gsm matte photo paper.
The rest of the images shown below: a variety of traditional media (including acrylic, oil pastel, chalk pastel and fine-liner pen) layered over digital photographs printed onto a variety of papers (including copier paper, 200gsm watercolour paper)
